


Cherry Hill

by losinmymarbles



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Crushes, DNF, Dream Smp, Fae & Fairies, Fairies, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gay, M/M, Magic, Minecraft, Multi, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Wizards, dreamnotfound, mcyt - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28350789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losinmymarbles/pseuds/losinmymarbles
Summary: George is lonely, Nick and Wilbur are bored, and life in Cherry Hill seems like it's never going to be anything but mundane. Then a mysterious stranger sets up shop on Pearl Street, and suddenly everything is a little more magical. (AU.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Zak Ahmed/Darryl Noveschosch
Comments: 21
Kudos: 65





	1. Curiosities

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first time writing fanfiction. I plan on making this quite a long one, so I hope you enjoy the ride haha. Also, please leave any criticism or suggestions for the this chapter! I'd love to hear it. Remember to leave kudos and bookmark if you want to see more of this fic!

It was an enchanting tree. The leaves, vibrant and full of life, and branches low enough that kids could reach up and haul themselves up, sit on branches to hold secret meetings, or drop things on passerby's heads. A bird’s nest was visible halfway up the tree; in the mid-afternoon, a sparrow soared back and forth with snacks from the café nearby, to the entertainment of anyone watching. People exclaimed, "the dad, he’s bringing food back for the babies!" Truth was that no one had the qualifications to decide whether the bird was male or female.

The shadow the tree cast was lengthy and dark, providing relief to those who passed under on the sunny day. People passing leaned against the trunk for a moment, feeling the scratchy bark through their clothes, fingers absently tracing the initials of teenagers from long ago. The tree stood high and mighty in the summer; it looked loved, as though it had been there forever.

It hadn’t.

Riding downhill was always a challenge because the brakes on his bike were shot to hell, so George kept his heels hovering just above the ground, ready to dig in if necessary. There was no traffic today, and one of the main roads of the village was eerily quiet.

The straight road at the bottom of the hill rushed up to meet him; he was coasting along with it, the breeze flowing through his brunette hair. He sat upright on the seat and stared– a collection of cars parked halfway down the street, and he could see from here the small crowd of people in Lani's bakery. George wondered if Lani was having one of her more legendary sales and if he had forgotten, but that seemed unlikely; even if he did, Lani would remind him, and try to sneak a few extra loaves of bread under the guise of a ridiculous ‘seven-for-one special’.

The old barber of Cherry Hill had been closed for nearly two years now, since his death, the standard announcement declaring “it will open again in another week. Maybe two.” It never did. Now, an entirely different building in place of the former barbershop – taller than the barber’s used to be, with old stonework and a door with peeling pale blue paint, and _Curiosities_ printed in fading gold over the window. George dug his feet into the ground and stared at it; he rode down this road every day. He was sure the shop wasn’t there yesterday afternoon, or even this morning.

Although, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like it always had been there. After all, it was impossible for shops to just grow out of nowhere. It was more likely that George was just tired than that something miraculous had happened. George didn’t believe in miracles.

He propped his bike up against the big tree that threw its shade over the pavement (something flickered uncertainty in George’s memory, something weird about that old tree, but he dismissed it). He drew closer to the peculiar building and peered in the window. The glass wore a thin layer of dust and the light inside was dim but he could make out the inside of a cluttered room, and a collection of Things on display. _Things_ because there was no other word for them; in the window, there was a hat sitting atop wooden head, countless pieces of jewelry sprawled about counter, a tea set in a shade of blue George didn’t think he’d ever seen before, a sprawling pile of thick books, and a massive, slightly malevolent looking teddy bear. He saw a flash of yellow wings out of the corner of his eye and looked up at the birdcage hanging in the window, but it was empty.

There was also a sign. It said, ' _open_ ,' and then, underneath that, _No cricket(s) allowed_. George blinked curiously at it and looked up at the sky. It was late in the afternoon, the sun sank behind the houses, and he was a bit drowsy from an all-day shift at the smoothie café. Though, he didn’t particularly feel like going home. His tiny, dirty house with its boarded-up windows on the outskirts of town, next to the railway line, didn’t hold much appeal.

He reached out for the door.

Nick lounged across the couch and eyed the pile of DVDs with no small degree of wariness. “Y’know,” he said, gentle as he could make it, “You’re a bit scary when Niki goes away.”

Wilbur looked up and smiled tightly, his eye twitched in a way that likely meant to suggest his general amazement and bewilderment that Nick would dare suggest such a thing. It didn’t work well, mostly because he was too fixated on color-coding their living room to put much effort into it.

He opened his mouth, but Nick wasn’t that interested in hearing his roommate’s excuses about how it was a 'perfectly worthwhile' lifestyle choice to keep yourself busy when you were bored. Instead, he stood up and wandered into the kitchen, pulling the vanilla bean ice cream out of the freezer and fetching a spoon from the drawer. When he returned, Wilbur was adjusting the curtains’ length, twitching them until they were even.

Nick blinked at him. “You ever get the feeling,” he paused thoughtfully, “that we have too much time on our hands?”

Wilbur stared up at him and started making sure the books on the coffee table were aligned perfectly with their shadows. To then stare back at Nick once more, Wilbur gestured at their eerily neat living room. “Oh most definitely,” Wilbur sneered with a hint of exasperation in his voice.

Inside, it was like a museum. One from the storybooks, or the pulp novels George read when he was fifteen, cluttered with Things falling everywhere, piles of them towering over his head, and the occasional label or price tickets in strange, copperplate handwriting. Books were balanced on top of hat boxes, with feathers peeking out from the crevices in between; cracked mirrors on the walls reflected corners filled with boxes and items that George hadn’t noticed when he was looking directly at them. George was reminded of his grandparents’ attic before his Granddad died and it was cleaned out. Everything in here felt vaguely loved despite its well-used quality, and things seemed as if they were humming, just waiting to be picked up and taken home.

He absently brushed a cobweb from a jar of iridescent marbles.

“Be careful of the spiders,” a voice teased in his ear. George mostly succeeded in not squeaking out loud.

He did jump, however, and he spun around. His widened chestnut eyes met a very tall, well-built, and oddly dressed man. He wore a yellow (actually a nice forest green unbeknownst to George) hooded-cloak that draped over a black turtleneck vest that complemented his nicely toned chest; he also wore tan cargo pants, neatly tucked beneath a black belt– all paired with black combat boots. He dressed quite warmly despite the high temperatures of the pleasant summer day. However, most strangely, he wore a mask. A porcelain mask with a sloppily painted smiley face that concealed the upper half of his face. Only leaving tiny freckles, tanned skin, and a pair of mischievous lips in sight. George puffed out and replied, “Oh, I – hi.”

He cocked his head to the side and smiled crookedly, just the corner of his mouth twitching up. “Hello,” the stranger replied playfully. 

“I’m George,” he mumbled, drawing himself up a little taller, in a desperate attempt to not look as anxious as he truly was. It was weird to introduce himself; he hadn’t been out of Cherry Hill since he was a kid, on trips to the city with his family, and everyone knew everyone here. “Are you, uh– is this your shop, then?”

“It sure is,” the stranger responded. He shook George’s hand, an oddly formal gesture in someone who seemed to be about the same age as George. His hands were cool and dry. “I’m called Dream, hello.”

Dream, a strange name, though, oddly befitting for the peculiar man. George shifted his balance from foot to foot a little unsurely. “Have you been here long?” he inquired, calling up a bright smile from somewhere. Dream seemed a little quiet, but it didn’t seem as if he wanted George to go away and stop annoying him. George could not remember the last time he talked to someone properly.

“No, not very long,” Dream answered. “I just opened up shop today. I only got here late last night.”

George stared, and then scanned the crowded, cobwebby interior. “But – it looks like you’ve been here forever.”

“Oh,” Dream said and waved a hand vaguely. “I had some help setting up.”

“Uh,” George murmured, uncomfortably. He shrugged one shoulder up, let it drop. “Okay, then.” Dream didn’t say anything, but he never turned his head away from George’s direction. Seemingly, interested in a slightly distant way, like George was a distraction that could only last so long. It was a weird type of look to be observed with, and not entirely pleasant, but it was better than being ignored. Finally, George asked, at the risk of sounding like an idiot, “So you sell… like, antiques?”

Dream smiled again, that crooked one, swift and fleeting. “Curiosities,” he corrected. “It says on the window.”

“Oh,” George said. “Yeah, I mean. Of course. Sorry.” Dream shrugged and George glanced around him again, said, “Where did you find all of these things?”

“Around,” Dream responded bluntly. George raised an eyebrow and then flushed pink at his rudeness, laughing awkwardly even though there wasn’t anything to laugh about. Dream tilted his head in confusion, but continued unexpectedly, saying, “Some people gave me, and some were just there. I came across them or fixed them. I’m fairly good at finding things, I suppose.”

“Oh,” George said with a bit more pep in his voice. “Well. That’s cool.”

Dream nodded and didn’t say anything else; George turned a little awkwardly and ran his fingers along with a faded blue ribbon, tied to the end of a wooden bed frame, the main part of which was covered with yet more Things. The ribbon was made out of some sort of cotton, and despite the cool air inside the shop it felt almost warm to George’s touch; soft, and curling up to meet his fingers when he reached the end of it.  


“It’s pretty,” he gushed, looking up to where Dream hadn’t moved.

“Yes,” Dream said and bit his lip, smiling. “It looks nice hung in windows and such, you know. Birds like it, too.” He hesitated and then asked, in a slightly dubious sort of manner, as if he wasn’t quite sure if this was the correct thing to say, “Would you like it?”

“Oh,” George said, surprised. He thought about taking it home, winding it around his wrist and letting it fly out in the breeze behind him as he careened down the hills, out of town and past the church and his old house, to his grimy shack of a home. It was weird; he didn’t generally appreciate the aesthetics of things, more drawn to things he could do or involve himself in, but there was something rather nice about this ribbon, something soft and comforting. He thought he could almost smell his mother’s perfume.

He thought about taking it home. Then he thought about tying it in the dark, where it couldn’t flutter slightly as if there was a breeze that it alone could feel in this quiet shop, thought about it hanging limp and eventually distorted from the coughs of gas and smoke George’s oven was prone to giving out, abandoned and dirty above George’s dirty dishes.

“I’d better not,” he said. “I wouldn’t have anywhere to put it.”

“If you’re sure,” Dream said. George nodded hurriedly and backed away, tripping over his own feet.

“Y-yes,” he stuttered. “Yes, anyway, I’d better be going – it was nice to meet you, Dream, I guess I’ll see you around—”

“Bye, George,” Dream said.

George rode home as fast as he could, chest feeling tight and a little miserable. When he got there, there was a blue ribbon tied around his doorknob, the ribbon fluttered about in a breeze George couldn’t feel.

George entered the shop again the next day. It was a Saturday, and normally, he would spend it half-heartedly cleaning his house in a vain attempt to get it looking vaguely like a place he’d want to live in _if_ he was feeling productive. He’d lie around trying to get reception on his shitty TV if he wasn’t. He woke up in the morning, though, and when he went outside the ribbon was still there, bright and cheerful in the morning light. He untied it from the knob and encircled the end around his fingers with absent curiosity. When the next train drove by, loud and angry sounding, the ribbon flapped in the wind, people on the train leaned out and waved back at him, mistaking it for a gesture. Despite himself, George grinned. He proceeded with his morning routine and rode his bike to Cherry Hill once again.

He took the scenic route, it was ten o’clock by the time he got there. The little sign on the shop was flipped to ' _open_ ' and a small crowd of people were in Lani's bakery; wandering out onto the pavement and peeking curiously at the peculiar shop next door. He saw a few of them look at him skeptically. He tried his best to ignore the prying eyes and raised his chin high when he marched straight through the door.

“Polite people knock!” a voice shrieked above his head.

George jumped, slamming his head against a cupboard positioned in a supremely bothersome spot. He whirled around quickly, scanning for the voice, but there was no one to be seen, not even when he did a full circle of the room.

There was a clatter from the dark doorway behind the desk at the very back of the store, and Dream emerged. Instead of his strange attire from yesterday, he wore a pale yellow knit sweater (actually green, once again), black and white striped pajama pants, and the goofiest slippers George had ever seen: _dragon slippers_. His uncovered hair was loosely curled and honey-blonde, tufts of it stuck up in odd directions. That peculiar smiley face mask still sat atop Dream’s face though, it was a bit crooked, which revealed one eyebrow.

“You alright?” Dream asked, whilst mid-yawn. “The chimes can be a bit rude. Sorry.”

“The – the chimes?” George turned around and looked at the silver bells hanging above the doorway. “You have chimes programmed to talk like that? They didn’t say anything yesterday!”

“Oh, well, it depends on their mood,” Dream explained drowsily. “I was trying to hang that lampshade up—” he waved vaguely to an Eastern-looking lampshade, suspended from the ceiling, draped in blue silk “—but I got the words mixed up. Don’t worry about them.”

“You were,” George began, eyes wide, mind racing, and then stopped, rubbed his forehead. “Okay, well, never mind. Morning.”

“Good morning, did you need something?” Dream inquired, a bit surprised George returned to the shop.

“What? No,” George said. The words were faintly unfriendly, but Dream left him a present yesterday, somehow, and George wasn’t going to let any kind of gesture, however, the minute it might be, pass him by. “You just. You left a ribbon on my door, last night.”

Dream looked weirdly guilty for a moment. “I, uh,” he began, and George grinned.

“It was a pretty nice thing to do, dude,” he thanked. “Though I don’t wanna know how you know where I live.”

Dream started to smile, then, properly, for the first time. He countered mischievously, “I don’t know where you live.”

“No?” George asked, raising his eyebrows incredulously.

“No,” Dream confirmed. He paused, and added, smile gone tentative, “But the ribbon does.”

George laughed at that, though he didn’t quite know why; it wasn’t that funny, but Dream had that hopeful little smile, and it had been a long time since anyone made any sort of attempt to make George laugh. Dream looked surprised again, but also kind of pleased. George wanted to ask, _where the hell did you come from_? Though, he thought that could wait.

Instead, he took out the crumpled package he had shoved in his hoodie pocket this morning. “Here,” he said. “I brought tea. As like, a thank you thing? My mom dries the leaves and stuff herself, it’s really good. This is my last bit.”

“Oh,” Dream said, delighted. “Thank you.” George passed it to him and Dream held it strangely, cupping it close to him. He looked up at George and flushed pink, “Would you like a cup?”

George beamed. “That would be awesome,” he replied with a goofy smile.

Dream was an oddball to talk to, George decided; he’d happily answer any question George put to him, and he listened to George’s random chatter with strange amounts of interest, but he never really volunteered anything himself. Occasionally he’d ask something, but more often than not, he just sat and listened to George ramble, and refilled their cups when they got empty. George would have thought they’d be at the bitter dregs of the tea long ago, but it still tasted clear, hot, and strong. He guessed that Dream’s teapot was bigger than it looked and that George had had more leftover tea leaves than he had thought.

When Dream did answer a question, it was invariably in a way that just induced more questions. Where was he from before he came here? “I was living in New York.” Oh, wow, that must have been amazing. Why did he leave for a quiet, nowhere place like Cherry Hill? “I don’t know. I’d been there long enough.”

The weirdest moment came when George asked if he’d miss friends or family from there. “Oh,” Dream said, looking startled as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I don’t have any friends. Or family,” he added.

George blinked at him, mouth agape. Dream shifted a little uncomfortably in his chair, tilting his head so that his mask slipped down ever so slightly. “Oh,” George said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Dream wondered, voice soft and wistful. George stared, even more, caught between confusion and a strange, fierce, sense of kinship.

“Because, um,” he paused, and looked down, tracing shapes in the dust on the counter. They were perched on tall wooden barstools that Dream had dragged out from behind a bookshelf, deceptively comfortable and smooth, no splinters to be found. Dream had his legs all folded up between the stool’s legs in an oddly charming fashion.

George cleared his throat wearily and offered, “Because it’s nice to have friends?”

“Yes,” Dream agreed, with a hint of somber in his voice. George wondered if he had only imagined the quiet afterthought, “So I’ve been told.”

It wasn’t until George’s stomach started rumbling that he realized he’d been there for hours and that he should probably get going. He told Dream so and Dream stood up, looking tall and distant again, ready to drift away into the backroom. George had made him laugh, a little while ago. He didn’t want to let Dream slip away so easily, he thought suddenly.

“Hey,” he said. “I haven’t got anything planned tomorrow.”

Dream looked up. “Yeah?” he queried and beamed. “You could come around again if you wanted.” 

“Are you open on Sundays?” George asked excitedly despite his efforts to play it cool.

Dream’s smile grew. “You can come around,” he paused, took George’s hand with his own, “whenever you want.” A proposal that made George’s cheeks burn ever so slightly.

Working full-time in a supermarket wasn’t the most glamorous thing Nick could think of to do, but it was alright. It paid enough that he could manage the (fairly cheap, anyway) rent on the little house he shared with Wilbur easily enough, and he didn’t have to go home and stress about work, the way you did in jobs that meant something. Nick wasn’t even twenty, he only finished school two years ago; he didn’t see the need for a huge rush to go out and save the world or contribute positively to society or whatever. He’d probably enjoy college more if he waited a few years, anyway. Cherry Hill was a comfortable kind of place, and hard to leave if you’d been there all your life.

Still, his job – while not being precisely _bad_ – was for the most part, quite monotonous, for Nick, accustomed to zoning out while he swept floors or stocked shelves. Not many people came up to ask for help; it was a small kind of store, and it had been there forever– everyone knew their way around.

It took Nick a while to notice the masked man that stood in front of him with an inquisitive smile spread on his face, and he wore a cloak. _Why is this motherfucker cosplaying in the middle of a damn grocery store_? Nick thought to himself as he tried his hardest to maintain a polite expression.

“Um, hello,” Nick greeted, gulping nervously. “Can I help you?”

“Hopefully,” the guy replied cooly. “I’m looking for leeks?”

“Oh, they’re tucked away in a corner,” Nick said. “We don’t get many people looking for them during the summertime. Follow me, I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” the guy thanked, and stepped neatly alongside Nick. He wore lesbian-esque combat boots, Nick noticed with some bemusement. Nick had never seen him before in his life.

“Are you visiting?” Nick asked curiously.

“No,” the guy said. “I just moved here a few days ago. I’m Dream, I set up the shop next to the bakery.”

“Oh!” Nick exclaimed and stared at Dream a little more openly. Really, _Dream_? This dude's _gotta_ be fuckin' with me. 

The town had been buzzing with talk about the strange man who’d opened up shop and the strange items in the shop. There was a weird hint of mystery about the whole thing, and as far as Nick knew, nobody had been into the shop, apart from the weird Davidson kid, who didn’t count. Dream didn’t look very mysterious though, just _mildly_ schizophrenic. Though, Nick had a creeping feeling he could only hear one set of footsteps echoing off the floor: his own.

“Are you settling in okay?” Nick asked. He felt a little bit guilty, now, knowing how thoroughly the town had persisted in evading contact with the weird shop. It looked a little bit spooky, yeah, but Dream seemed quiet and not in the least way threatening, and Nick supposed it must have felt like quite an unfriendly welcoming.

“Quite well, thank you,” Dream said, and smiled, ducking his head. “I’m still finding my way around, though.”

“Hence the help with the leeks, I suppose,” Nick agreed lightly.

“Yes!” Dream sounded delighted. “I've always had trouble sleeping in a new place.”

Nick blinked at him, the conversation suddenly went off in a strange direction, fucking _pardon_? Nick held back his instinctual profanity bomb, “Come again?”

“Well, I use the leeks as a depressant,” Dream told him. “In sleeping draughts, you know. I had the unicorn hair and the hundred-year-old nutmeg, but it’s always the more common ingredients you forget.”

Nick stopped in his path and stared. “Unicorn hairs?” he echoed with a puzzled expression.

“Oh, you don’t have any here, of course,” Dream recounted. “I brought a supply with me, although in any case, you never know when one is going to wander through the worlds.”

Nick decided to pick the easiest part of the gibberish to question. “Worlds? You mean, like, countries, right?” _Right on the money with the schizophrenia I suppose_ , Nick thought amidst his bewilderment.

Dream raised an eyebrow, giving Nick a faintly condescending look. “No,” he drawled and then brightened. “Although there was that one time with the blessing of unicorns in Saudi Arabia. They wandered into Mecca and oh, man, that was a bad moment.”

Nick blinked several times, but Dream was still standing there, hopeful and sort of friendly, talking about unicorns. Kind of like a kindergartener making up stories; sure the rambling was charming, but it was also utter bullshit. “Here are your leeks,” Nick murmured faintly, holding out two bushels, questioning his reality. Dream’s face fell suddenly, and he looked down, hurt, and then back up again. He looked far away.

“Thank you,” he said and took the leeks. He didn’t talk to anyone else as he paid and left, but Nick watched him, leaning on his broom, all the same.

Wilbur’s job might be boring, but at least it had hours that were flexible enough for him to drop in and see how Nick was holding up at _his_ boring job when he felt like it. (Wilbur and Nick had long arguments over whose job was the worst, arguments that Nick generally won; taking photos for the local paper, no matter how dull the subject matter, was always going to be more fun than putting away cans of baked beans.) Nick looked distracted, which wasn’t unusual, but in a more thoughtful way than normal, frowning as he stacked packets of flour into the shelves.

“Hey,” Wilbur said, popping up beside him. “You doing okay?”

Nick turned his gaze on Wilbur, still frowning, and took a moment to snap out of it and answer. “Oh, sorry. Hi.”

“Hey,” Wilbur repeated, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Did something happen, dude?”

“Not really,” Nick said, slowly. “I just. Had a very strange conversation.”

“Interesting strange, or oh god, please hand me the brain bleach strange?” Wilbur enquired, leaning on a shelf and grinning at Nick. Nick’s mouth quirked despite himself.

“Bit of both, I guess,” he admitted. “But now I’m not even sure if it was real or if I imagined it.”

Wilbur raised his eyebrows. “That sounds kind of weird.”

“It was,” Nick agreed, almost too fervently. “It was that guy. The one who opened the Antiques Store on Pearl Street. Dude named _Dream_. He came in to buy leeks.”

“And everyone knows how freakish leeks are,” Wilbur retorted, Nick's laughter followed. “I gotta admit though, Dream’s a fucking absurd name.”

“Oh yeah for sure dude,” he said, cheering up a little bit. “I don’t know, Wilbur. It was a fuckin' odd conversation. I don’t know if I’m maybe just going a little bit nutty from being locked up in here all day.”

“Mondays are the worst,” Wilbur agreed sympathetically, and then hesitated. “How was it weird?”

“He rambled about – y’know what? I’m gonna sound crazy if I say it,” Nick replied. He paused and then looked craftily at Wilbur, eyes bright with mischief. “Hey, you could always go down and meet him _yourself_. I wanna know what you think.”

“ _Nick_ ,” Wilbur groaned, while Nick widened his stupid brown eyes and smiled sunnily at him.

“Come ooon, Wilbur,” he pleaded. “It’s not like you have anything better planned to do. Didn’t you say you needed a present for Niki’s birthday, anyway? Maybe you could find something there. She likes vintage stuff.”

“Don’t think I can’t feel you manipulating me,” Wilbur grumbled. “Fine, okay, whatever. You better be making dinner tonight as a thank you.”

Nick winked at him, as Wilbur ambled off to find out exactly what was with this guy.

The shop was quiet, apart from the tinkling little melody the chimes above the door played when he stepped inside, and a little dark, filled with a cool, faintly blue light like the onset of evening. He liked the aroma; a little like incense and a little like smoking weed outside on long summer afternoons, but different, too, something unrecognizable and familiar at the same time, and infinitely calming.

There was no sign of anybody besides him in the shop, nobody behind the counter. He turned and crouched by a cabinet with a variety of jewelry scattered over it, some pieces tangled together. His hand hovered over it for a moment, and then he noticed a silver charm bracelet, with only two or three charms already on it. One was a blue lamb, and Wilbur could almost swear that his attention was drawn to it in the first place by a twitch of movement, like hooves kicking in empty air.

He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It was pretty and untarnished and felt reassuringly heavy in his hand. He admired it, thinking already about how to wrap it for Niki, and where to find some other charms.

“Ah, yes, this is a fine example of Arabian workmanship,” someone said, and Wilbur turned around quickly to see a masked man, slightly shorter than him, dressed in some DND type shit smiling at him. _This has to be Dream right_? Wilbur thought. “It’s genuine Braka silver,” Dream continued. “You’ve got a good eye. Would you like to pick out some charms?”

“Um,” Wilbur stuttered, taken aback by the odd man who stood before him. “Sure.”

Dream stood up and led him over to the counter, brushing away a handful of dust with a careless movement. It seemed too clean when Dream was done, like when Nick had squirted the windows with Windex and bitched about how it should be impossible for them to get things this dirty, they didn’t even _touch_ the windows. Then Dream opened it and picked out the ones Wilbur pointed to, drawn to the simple, elegant lines and shapes of strange letters and symbols, smiling and explaining as he did so.

“This one gives luck on every second Tuesday,” he said, lingering over a tiny silver flower. “This is for avoiding sudden showers without an umbrella. Would you like one for fertility?” Wilbur shook his head wildly.

It wasn’t one of the most normal conversations he’d had, as Dream continued to talk about charms and good luck and whether or not the person who would be wearing it had blue eyes or green, but Dream didn’t seem _that crazy_ , well, at least not threatening. He was pretty harmless Wilbur was sure, and the bracelet was ridiculously inexpensive. The only moment where Wilbur felt in the least bit unwelcome was when he was leaving, clutching the bracelet wrapped in tissue paper, at the same time that George came in through the door, and looked at Wilbur with a narrowed, almost hostile gaze.

The door closed behind him and Wilbur looked back to see George turning around and glaring at him, too, but in the background, Dream was dragging out wooden stools, and smiling. As Wilbur watched, he walked across and flipped the sign to ' _closed_ ', even though it was two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. Wilbur waved, hesitantly, and Dream cheerfully waved back.  
All in all, Wilbur thought, a rewarding enough excursion, and now he got free dinner tonight and a new story to tell.


	2. The Magician

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy! I just wanna say thanks to everyone who left kudos and feedback on the last chapter, this is my first time writing a fic and I'm glad that people already like it :). I've been enjoying writing this quite a bit and got carried away, so this chapter is a bit longer than usual (I had lots of fun with the dialogue haha).

Logically, George had known that it would happen eventually. Dream was quiet and awkward, but he was harmless enough for the town to adopt him. The day after Wilbur Soot from the paper invaded Dream’s shop, George lingered grumpily outside on the sidewalk as six year old Tubbo, leaned up on the counter and talked to a bemused looking Dream.

It was unfair to be angry, George knew, scuffing his foot along the ground. It was unfair, and not very friendly of him, and he should be glad that people were being nice to Dream. It was just – it had been good, George thought, to have someone who met his gaze, looked at rather than past him. George had almost forgotten how nice it was to have someone to hang out with, and it was almost certainly coming to a close now. It was only a matter of time before somebody told Dream about George, and once they did, he would be on his own again. Wilbur was ridiculously well-liked around the town, George knew, though he’d never really spoken to Wilbur himself; probably he would soon be deemed a much more suitable friend for Dream than George could ever hope to be. George wouldn’t mind but it hurt to know that Dream might end up thinking it, too.

Eventually, Tubbo emerged with a hopeful expression and raced down the street to where a small cluster of his friends was waiting, looking simultaneously frightened and eager. George resisted the urge to glare after them, but only barely and only because they were young, and it got a lot harder when one of the older ones _Tommy_ , looked straight at him and laughed, cocky and self-assured. George ducked his head quickly and set his mouth into a firm line, pushing in through the doorway.

The chimes made a small, snoring sound above his head, and Dream didn’t look up. He was bent, forehead furrowed in concentration, wrapped in his usual cloak, and wore his trademark mask. He hovered over a beheaded teddy bear, the stuffing leaking out of its neck and one armpit. George took a confused step forward and Dream made a soft, inquisitive humming noise, then flicked out his hands in a decisive sort of way.

George’s mouth dropped open and he stood staring in disbelief as the bear rose a little jerkily into the air, hovering nearly a foot off the counter, standing up in mid-air. Dream murmured something, too quiet for George to hear, and the teddy bear did a little jiggle. The corners of Dream’s mouth twitched, but he covered it with a stern expression.

“Don’t be so immature,” he told it, and it fell still. Dream turned his palms up and slowly, so slowly that George wasn’t sure for a minute if it was there, a thin, transparent image of a head slowly began to appear above the teddy’s neck. It grew darker and more solid until finally, Dream nodded, and George realized with a start that it was real, attached to and fitting the bear as if it had been there all along.

“Excusemewhatthefuck?” George blurted out, Dream jumped, the bear thumped heavily back down on the counter.

“You scared me,” Dream said, putting a hand to his heart, and then he smiled, disarmingly sweet. “Hi, Georgie.”

“What was that?! And what’s up with the nickname?” George demanded, pacing forward and poking the bear’s head a few times. It felt soft and heavy, like the toys he had as a kid. George looked up, staring at (the slightly confused looking) Dream. “Was that– can you do fu–fucking magic or something?”

Dream’s face fell. “Oh,” he said, passing his hand absently over the bear’s body. The fur grew back in places where it had worn thin, and the holes in the material sewed themselves up neatly. “Did I forget to tell people again?”

George gaped at him. “It might,” he said weakly, “have slipped your mind.”

“It was that kid’s teddy bear,” Dream told him anxiously. “Tubbo. He saw the bear in the window and thought I could help. Apparently, his friend – kidnapped and tortured it, something to do with money I think? He was– it wasn’t his fault, and that was mean of his friend. I just wanted to fix it.”

George pushed his hands through his hair, head reeling. “Fair enough,” he said, for lack of anything better to say, and then raised his head. “Did – so you’re—”

“Oh Georgie~,” Dream sung. “I’m a magician.”

“ _Right_ ,” George said, a little croakily in his disbelief, and sat down heavily on a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“I don’t try to hide it,” Dream told him, staring at the counter and twisting his hands together. “It’s just. I forget, sometimes, that people don’t know automatically, here, and—”

“Yeah,” George interrupted, cross-legged in the comfortable armchair. He sipped at the tea Dream had fetched him, sweet and weirdly minty underneath that, then grinned up at Dream and said, “I get it, I do. Or, like, I can try. It was just… a bit of a shock. Uh.” He wound a finger through his hair and twisted it absently. “But, no, dude, this is kind of – really amazing, you know.” He tilted his head to the side and asked, “Hey, so, you can – heal teddy bears, and send ribbons off to decorate random houses. What else?”

“Um,” Dream said, half-smiling. “A lot of stuff. I don’t know.”

George flushed, rubbing at his nose awkwardly. “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t be intruding and shit, I—”

“No,” Dream interrupted quickly. “No, I mean – I don’t know where to start. What do you want me to do?”

George grinned at him, setting his tea aside and folding his hands in his lap, like a little kid at a show. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Show me something. Anything.”

Dream cocked his head slightly. “Well,” he said, and just like that, silence. The shop was gone, and George was standing next to him on a pebbly beach. The wind was strong and smelled of sea salt, and the sea was grey and rough. It was wild, desolate, and freezing, and George shivered and tucked himself into Dream’s side without even thinking about it. Dream went tense and George thought, _idiot_. When he looked up cautiously at Dream, though, Dream’s lips pursed in surprise but not annoyed, even cautiously pleased, and George grinned and squirmed closer to Dream, his teeth chattering.

“Jesus,” he said. “You couldn’t have told me to grab a coat before transporting us off to the bloody Antarctic?”

“The Antarctic is much colder than this,” Dream told him, grinning, and George got the sudden, vivid image of Dream wrapped in his cloak and multiple scarves and wandering over an icy landscape, dark against the white, an albatross circling slowly overhead. He blinked and shook his head. “And anyway,” Dream continued. “We haven’t gone anywhere. You can see if you look properly.”

Sure enough, when George concentrated, out of the corner of his eye he could see the shadows of furniture, even the shape of the huge tree outside the shop window. Ahead of them, the beach seemed to go on forever.

“Could we keep walking?” he asked, imagining running into an invisible wall.

“For as long as you want,” Dream told him, and put an arm around George’s shoulders, slanting a wary glance at him as if worried he was doing it wrong. “But I think you might get too cold after a while.”

Then they were standing back in the shop again. Dream’s hair was unkempt from the wind, standing up at odd angles, his cloak’s hood swept back. Though, the sand that had clung to their shoes was gone. George rubbed his eyes and laughed a little wildly. He was, he thought, more than a little freaked out, but Dream looked quiet and as charmingly weird as ever, and really, George thought, _really,_ his was maybe the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

“Okay,” George said. “That was pretty awesome.”

“I can do a lot of things,” Dream told him, voice clear and honest. “I don’t know how to answer your question, though. That’s like me asking _you_ what you can do.”

“Not much,” George said and laughed. “I can make smoothies, play shitty flute solos, and ride my bike. I’m easy, see, nothing very special at all.”

Dream perched on the counter, careless of the glass on the display case. He smiled for the first time as if there was some great secret he was privy to, something huge and majestic that he could see about the world while others stumbled blind. “George Davidson,” he said. “Now you’re just being stupid.”

For a while, George felt strange visiting Dream. All of a sudden Dream was something huge, unknowable, and beyond George’s comprehension (“So is it, like – some kids are just born with it? Like in Harry Potter?” Dream paused. “No,” he said, “I don’t come from this world,”).

Then one day when he arrived, the chimes over the door sounding a little like an alarm clock, Dream was half-asleep at the hill slumping over the bench with his ledger opened in front of him. George could see the writing trail away into squiggles and a large blot beneath that, and when he drew closer – to Dream blearily sitting up straight – he could see a bunch of haphazard dates and a few (incorrect) sums down the left-hand side of the page.

“Hi,” Dream said, mid-yawn. “Sorry, I was up late last night. There was this stupid potion—”

“Um,” George said, uncertainly. “Did you know that your hands are blue?”

Dream looked down and made a horrifying little squawking noise, staring at his dyed blue fingers with disbelief. “Ah, fuck,” he moaned, dropping his head. “That goddamn pixie juice—”

“Dirty,” George said, wiggling his eyebrows, and Dream made a face.

“I’m going to have to make a whole new thing,” he groaned. “And I didn’t even finish the other one last night!” His statement was punctuated, quite firmly, by a sudden loud and unmistakable stomach rumble.

George’s lips twitched. “Are you hungry?” he asked, as he tried to stifle a laugh.

Dream tilted his head to the side, considering, and then offered a little uncertainly, “I think so?”

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“I don’t think I had any,” Dream said, musingly, and George made a horrifying noise.

“Dude!” he said. “You can’t do that, oh my God. Okay, just, stay there,” he added, and then left and went quickly into Lani's shop, and picked up some sandwiches and her famous chocolate mini-muffins.

“Um,” he said, looking around the bakery. “You don’t happen to have any – I just, Dream next door, he forgot to eat breakfast, I think he might need—”

“One sec,” Lani said, grinning, and she ducked out the back and then returned with a carton of orange juice. “I have a spare one,” she explained and refused to let George compensate her for it.

When George came back in, Dream’s eyes lit up and he conjured a couple of glasses out of nowhere and promptly ignored George for the five minutes it took him to wolf everything down, while George watched in fascinated awe.

Finally, he laughed and shook his head. “You need a keeper,” George told him.

He didn’t know why he expected it, but for some reason, the concept of Dream being a magician and Dream being somewhat hopeless at regular meals took a while to sort through in his head, and it wasn’t until he spent the day at Dream’s shop one Sunday that he got it. They took a basket of food out for a walk and a late meal because Dream still hadn’t seen much of the scenery around Cherry Hill, and George told Dream that he’d meet him back at the shop after he’d quickly gone up to the café to check when his next shift was.

He found him sitting at the counter and digging into a huge plate of the remains of the cold roast they’d had for dinner.

“Um,” George said, staring. “Dude, what are you doing?”

“I forgot to have breakfast,” Dream said, sadly. “I’m having this for lunch.”

George blinked at him. “Dream, we ate dinner, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

Visiting the shop became second nature, something George just _did_. He dropped his bike on the pavement outside after work and came in to talk to Dream for hours, not leaving until it was late at night, his bike’s lights glowing in the darkness, and singing all the way home. Sometimes he would drop in on Lani first, to pick up scones or fresh loaves of bread, or – occasionally, on paydays – cake, while Dream brewed the tea next door. Now and then, if it had been a particularly long day at the café, Dream would look at George’s face once and then wave his hand, and the tea would be steaming hot chocolate instead.

Dream used magic in an offhand, absent-minded kind of way, often enough that George wondered how he hadn’t noticed it earlier, or how the rest of the town was still unaware. After the teddy bear incident, there had been a small trickle of visitors through the door. Mostly it was younger kids, especially Tommy and tiny Tubbo, who wandered through and poked at dusty objects, Dream stopping objects knocked off-balance from crashing and shattering with discreet flicks of his fingers. Sometimes, though, Wilbur Soot would come back, once to ask Dream for a new charm for some bracelet (“Anniversary thing,” he said, grinning), once to pick up an antique spice rack for his mom, now and then “just to say hi” or “see what new stuff you’ve got”. George was selfishly, viciously pleased when Wilbur very clearly didn’t know how to respond to Dream’s awkward, stilted answers, flushing at what he thought were dismissals.

Occasionally, Nick would wait outside for him, peering in curiously when he thought George and Dream weren’t looking. One day, Dream confessed, “I think I might have scared him off.”

“How?” It was a lazy kind of afternoon, both of them sprawled out on the floor of the shop. Dream was making the dust bunnies form clouds and dance Swan Lake in a distracted sort of way.

“I.” Dream turned a little pink, and George propped himself up on his elbows to study Dream’s embarrassment all the better with delighted disbelief. “I think I started talking about unicorns. I forgot that I wasn’t… that this is Cherry Hill.”

“And _that_ was Nick Sappitus,” George said and cackled. “His mom and my mom used to be friends, he used to come to my house when we were kids. He’s like, the most down-to-earth dude ever. He told me – when we were _four_ – that Santa Claus didn’t exist. It was pretty traumatic.”

“Oh,” Dream said, surprised. “You’re friends?”

George slipped back onto the floor, banging his head a little too hard against the wooden floorboards. “Oh,” he said. “Well, no, we were kids who played together when we were little. He went to the town’s school, you know, and I was homeschooled, and we just never really – I don’t know, I think he always thought I was a little weird.”

Dream looked displeased at that. “Idiot,” he commented, George ducked his head to hide his grin. It was strange, having a friend again. He couldn’t quite get used to it, and now and then he’d tune out when Dream was talking and revel in the strange, warm feeling of someone talking properly to him because they wanted to.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “What?”

“I said, why were you homeschooled?” Dream repeated.

“Oh,” George said. “My parents were just like. Religious and stuff.”

Dream blinked. “Were?” he asked, a little tentatively. “Did they like—”

“Sorry,” George cut in. “Sorry, no, they’re still alive. They are religious. It’s just, my parents and I, we don’t really, um, talk anymore.”

“Oh,” Dream mumbled sympathetically. George resisted the urge to scowl. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” George said. “It’s cool because, like… what the fuck ever, right? They’re into stuff and I can’t pretend anymore, only it’s just… my dad’s the Reverend. So it was kind of hard for them to deal with that.”

“Okay,” Dream said. He rolled with a complete lack of grace across the feet between them and slung his arm around George’s shoulder. “Okay.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Dream,” George said. “I’m fine, seriously. I was managing just fine before you came along.”

“I know,” Dream told him. George ducked his head and pressed his nose into the cotton of Dream’s cloak, curling into him, and the floor felt a little softer, like everything in Dream’s shop was trying to be still and safe for him, whispering _just for a little while_ , _we can look after you_ , _just for a very little while_. George could deal with that.

Dream was waiting for him the next day, mouth twitching stupidly like he was excited about something but didn’t know how to show it. George raised his eyebrows, sitting on one of the wooden stools and pouring himself a cup from the pot on the counter. He was tired, it was only Thursday when it felt like the week should have ended several days ago, and the teapot gave forth rich, steaming black coffee. George looked up, but Dream had done it without noticing, too used to small wonders. George thought he would never be used to it, but he didn’t mind that.

“So,” Dream said, with studied casualness. “I was thinking. You should quit your job.”

George blinked. “Oh, okay,” he responded sarcastically. “ _No worries_. I’ve got some books I’ve been meaning to get to, anyway, I needed some free time. Rent isn’t _that_ important, _right_?”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Dream mumbled impatiently, and George let out a hearty laugh. It was kind of weird hearing modern slang from Dream, sometimes – Dream was built like a twenty-year-old, dressed like a hot wizard, and often talked like he was from another century. George wondered idly how old he was, as he’d never seen his face. George paused, what the _fuck_ did I just think? _Hot_ wizard? 

“I mean,” Dream continued, cutting off George’s odd train of thought and he looked a little embarrassed. “I think, um. You should come to work with me.”

George froze, coffee halfway to his mouth, and then scowled, setting his cup aside and folding his arms. “Don’t,” he hissed. “I don’t want any fucking pity—”

“It’s not pity!” Dream snapped.

“It looks like it,” George told him, glaring.

“Fuck’s sake,” Dream said, and George was, despite himself, interested. Was this angry Dream? It was vaguely childlike in an amusing sort of way; Dream looked ready to stomp his foot at any minute. “George,” Dream said. “I’m not taking pity on you. I think the smoothie café is a shitty place to work but I don’t imagine that this place is much better. I’m being selfish. That’s all.”

George swallowed. He hadn’t known that Dream thought about him in terms like that. Something small and warm burned in his chest, caught off-guard still, even after weeks of getting used to Dream. “I don’t want,” he said, “to work for a friend.”

Dream folded his arms, stony-faced. “I’m not asking you to,” he told George. “I’m saying work with a friend. Okay?”

George picked up his cup of coffee and took a gulp, hot down his throat. “Okay,” he said.

Dream looked a little surprised. Then he smiled, small and amused like he couldn’t quite believe that he’d gotten what he’d wanted. “Yeah?” he said with excitement akin to a puppy when it’s owner comes home.

“Yeah,” George answered. He felt a little tired like he’d lost something, or like he was going to lose it soon. He looked at Dream and thought in terms of clocks and rumors and questions like _how long_? Dream was grinning at him cheerfully, though, so George mustered a smile and asked, “When do you want me to start? Tomorrow?”

“Don’t you need, um… to give notice?” Dream looked anxious. “I saw a film, once.”

“I work at a _smoothie_ café, Dream,” George remarked bluntly. “I think they’ll deal.” He stopped, mind catching up properly, and stared, bemused. “Wait, you saw a movie about quitting your job?”

“It was nice,” Dream said earnestly. “The boss and the girl fell in love at the end. It was a bit weird but sweet.”

George blinked. “Dream?” he attempted, the sick feeling in his stomach dissipating and giving way to glee. “Did this film happen to be called Two Week’s Notice?”

“Yeah!” Dream beamed. “Have you seen it, too?”

“Oh my God,” George said, “Hugh Grant would be so proud,” and promptly burst into laughter.

George had been looking forward to his first day working with Dream as a quiet alternative to the smoothie store. George hadn’t raised the issue of pay, hadn’t wanted to do that, but Dream had said vaguely at some point something about twice the amount George was used to getting, and George had blinked in surprise. He’d wait for the first paycheck, he decided, and then gently correct Dream on how much one was supposed to pay a shop assistant.

When he arrived at nine o’clock that morning, Dream had a teapot out and waited for him, and he looked surprisingly wide-awake, almost chirpy. George blinked at him, still knuckling sleep out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have figured you as a morning person,” he said.

“Oh, I just haven’t slept yet,” Dream told him, and sure enough, at ten o’clock, he passed out in an armchair that was labeled _vintage goblin handiwork: $25_ in black copperplate handwriting, legs tucked up beneath him and making little snuffling sounds into his shoulder. George tucked him up with a thick blue blanket ( _apparently woven of mermaid’s hair, though I wouldn’t trust them, the liars: $8_ ) and went back to pottering absently around the shop. He tried dusting some of the books with a rag that he’d found behind the counter, but one of them kept making seriously discomforting sneezing sounds that made him jump, and then a book with _Songs of the Absurd_ printed in gold on the spine slid into his hand, feeling almost warm to his touch, and he ended up sitting on a stool behind the counter reading that, instead.

He almost missed it when the chimes over the door made a soft, pleased cooing sound, but then someone else tripped over the doorway on their way in, and George started, looking up. He was expecting – and dreading, a little – one of the older citizens of the town (it was, he knew, only a matter of time before they came over to assess Dream and his shop for themselves, and probably warn him away from George as they did so), or maybe Wilbur Soot again, but it wasn’t anyone like that. Instead, lovers blinked back at him, the older one – George wracked his brains for his name; David? Dylan? Daniel? – turning slightly pink in the cheek.

“Um, hi?” Zak said. George liked Zak. He used to – well, George thought regretfully, probably still did. Zak used to walk down in his big brown overcoat in the Church, and then sit inside and stare about at the stained windows and sculptures with wide eyes. He’d usually sit with George in the grounds outside for a while, too, and even though they had never been friends, Zak had always been fun to talk to.

“Hey,” George said, remembering himself. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, you work here?” Zak brightened, and his boyfriend looked a little relieved. “I thought you were working at the café up the street. Did you set this place up? It’s amazing!”

“Um, it’s my first day,” George confessed, smiling a little sheepishly. “It’s Dream’s store. He’s well uh— sleeping,” he added and pointed to Dream. “If you need help with something I can wake him up, though.” He wondered if maybe this wasn’t a good idea. He’d never woken Dream before, and Dream _definitely_ didn’t strike him as a morning person.

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Zak said. “Me and Darryl—”

“Ah, _Darryl_ ,” George said, grinning with accomplishment now that he finally remembered his name then flushed when Zak and Darryl shot startled glances at him – oh, right, he said that out loud.

“—um, we’re just looking,” Zak finished.

“Knock yourself out,” George said, shrugging. For a while, he watched them, but mostly they just pottered around the place and called each other over from time to time, voices soft and lit up with wonder and laughter, and after a while, George returned to his book. 

“Oh, my muffin!,” Darryl exclaimed, and when George looked up, he was clutching a dusty tin of what looked like some form of art supply to his chest, flailing his hands around excitedly. _Did this grown ass man really say oh my muffin_? George watched warily, wondering if Zak would knock something over, but the shop seemed to be able to take care of itself; Zak’s hand mysteriously snuck perfectly through the gaps between things, and as George watched a lamp with two dusty little claws at its base picked itself up and waddle away. George shot a startled glance at Dream, but Dream was still peacefully asleep.

“I think, just this for today, it’s for Darryl!” Zak declared aloud, and then brought it over to George. It was a set of dusty oil paints, not looking like anything particularly special to George, and he shrugged and looked up.

“Three dollars,” he said. “You want it wrapped? I’ve got some brown paper down here.”

“It’s cool on its own,” Zak said, rummaging in his pocket. “This is a great place, dude”

Darryl interrupted excitedly with a goofy smile “three dollars is like amazing oh my gosh! If you look at the back, they’re really good paints, wow!” He slid open the box carefully and pulled out a tube, tapping his finger on the sample square in the middle of it. It was a weird kind of blue; like a light sky in the middle of the night. “I’ve been looking for a shade like this for ages. You should tell – Dream, is it? Tell him we’ll be back.” At that, Darryl snuck an uncertain look at the sleeping Dream, and George bit back his laughter.

“I’ll tell him,” George said. “Don’t mind Dream, he didn’t sleep last night,” he offered, as some kind of explanation, and Zak nodded, beaming.

“I know how that goes haha,” he said. “Come on, Darryl.” He tucked the paints under one arm, put another around Darryl’s shoulder, and wound his way back through the shop. George wondered if he was the only one noticing the furniture sneakily darting out of the way as the two lovers approached.

At the door, Zak stopped and turned. “Hey, it’s nice to see you again, George,” he said, suddenly earnest. “You look good.”

“Oh,” George said. He bit his lip to keep back the almost foolish grin growing on his face, but it didn’t do much of anything. “Thanks,” he said, and in his sleep, Dream laughed.

It had been a long day, and by four, Wilbur was ready to go home. He took one last picture of Imane Anys, otherwise known as The Most Boring Woman To Ever Create A Mural For School Children In The World, and then clapped his coworker, Schlatt on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to finish up with the interview,” he said cheerfully, and Schlatt gave him a look that promised slow death, but Wilbur was already skipping out of the stuffy living room and round the corner onto Pearl Street.

Stopping by Dream’s shop was an afterthought, and mostly just because Wilbur wanted to say thank you, after all. There was something about the things he had picked up there – he was thinking about maybe trying to find something for the little house he and Nick shared, actually, just to see what it would do to their quiet home. Dream seemed nice, too, if a little vague, and not particularly fond of people in general. Wilbur was sorry about that; Dream was interesting, and Wilbur would like to have gotten to know him better, but if short, startled sentences were the only responses he was ever going to get, he didn’t see anything going anywhere.

Inside the shop, though, there was no sign of Dream; instead, George Davidson was half-sprawled across the counter, reading a thick, old-looking book. “Oh,” Wilbur said, surprised. “Hi.”

George looked up and scowled at him. Wilbur shifted uncomfortably. He’d never actually spoken to George, but from the few encounters they’d had, he got the feeling that possibly he’d viciously murdered all of George’s beloved childhood pets in front of him. Probably he had done it in his sleep, as he couldn’t remember anything like that happening.

“What can I do for you,” George said flatly. It wasn’t a question; Wilbur had an uneasy feeling that it might be a threat.

“Um,” Wilbur said. “Nothing in particular. Just browsing, I guess. Do you work here?”

“Yes,” George said. Then he folded his arms and proceeded to glare at Wilbur as he walked around the shop uncomfortably.

“Um,” Wilbur said again, turning a little bit pink. He liked to think of himself as a friendly sort of guy, but George was both discomforting and slightly, well, _mean_. Wilbur didn’t know what he’d done. “Where’s Dream?”

George frowned. For a moment, Wilbur thought he was going to say something like ' _wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy_ ', but instead he just jerked his head at a chair, and Wilbur looked over. For a moment he was confused, but then the shadows shifted slightly and Dream turned his face, sighing out a breath, and Wilbur laughed short and warm despite the company.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess he did need someone else to help run this place.”

George’s back stiffened. “Dream does a great job,” he said, coldly. Wilbur blinked at him.

“Um, I know,” he said adjusting his beanie nervously. “I – I think Dream’s a great guy, dude, a little stand-offish, but—”

“Dream is not stand-offish!” George hissed, and Wilbur threw his arms up.

“Sorry!” he said. “I just – I only came to say thank you, really. For the things I’ve gotten here. Could you tell him thanks for me?”

George relaxed, slightly, though he didn’t stop glaring. “You bought them, didn’t you?” he inquired coolly. “Paid for them? Why would you say thanks?”

“Because they’re special,” Wilbur said, without thinking. He flushed and looked down, said, “This whole place is special. Look, I don’t know how I’ve pissed you off or whatever, but I’m honestly not planting bombs or anything, I just came to say—”

“Okay,” George said.

“What?” Wilbur blinked, stared at him. He had a feeling he was really out of his depth.

“Okay,” George repeated. He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m glad. That you think it’s special. And,” he added, unconvincingly, “I’m not pissed off at you.”

“Okay,” Wilbur echoed, warily. “I guess I’ll just—”

“Oh,” a rusty voice said to the side, and Wilbur looked to see Dream struggling upright in the chair. “Hi, Wilbur.” Dream rubbed his eyes and then looked at a broken clock on the wall, its hands stuck at midnight, and gaped. “Is it night time already?”

“It’s about half-past four,” George said, and his voice was suddenly warm; amused, and kind. When Wilbur looked over, startled by the sudden change, George was smiling. “D’you want some tea? I made a pot about half an hour ago. Well, your _pot_ made a—” and then he took a look at Wilbur and shut up, mouth snapping closed. Wilbur tried not to feel too bewildered.

“Yes, please,” Dream said and yawned hugely. He looked at Wilbur and asked, rubbing the sleep out of his tired eyes with the back of one hand, “Did your mom like that spice rack?”

Wilbur blinked. Dream had never really made any attempt at conversation before, and Wilbur wondered suddenly if it had something to do with just being awake. He thought about George, all his hackles raised the moment Wilbur walked in, almost _snarling_ , and the careful way Dream would respond to conversation as if he was walking into a trap, and things started to make a kind of sense.

“Yeah,” he replied. “She did, a lot. It – the food tastes better than ever.”

“Secret ingredient,” Dream said with a smirk, and then actually _wiggled his eyebrows_. Wilbur laughed out loud, surprised, and thought that he would have to come around when Dream was sleepy and unguarded more often. He turned that thought carefully over in his head, wondering if it was too creepy, and decided that it wasn’t, but he probably wouldn’t repeat it to Nick all the same.

“What’s that?” he asked, just as George slid around the counter with a cup outstretched for Dream.

Dream took the cup and sipped with a weird sort of dignified grace from it, and then he said like some sort of jazz radio host, “Love~,” and George almost fell over, he laughed so hard. Wilbur stared at him, eyes wide, and George pulled himself together pretty well, rubbing his hand over his face, but he was still giggling behind his fingers, and his eyes were bright and stupidly sparkly. Wilbur thought that George looked a lot nicer when he was happy.

“That,” George paused in an attempt to not burst into laughter again, “is maybe the cheesiest thing I have ever heard in my life.”

“It’s true!” Dream protested jokingly, and Wilbur laughed, despite himself. George glanced at him sharply, eyebrows drawing together, but after a moment he turned away without saying anything, and it wasn’t exactly mean.

“I wanted to thank you, actually,” Wilbur said. “The spice rack is really– it’s quite nice, and um, Niki– my girlfriend– she loves her bracelet.” He hesitated, because Nick had laughed at him when he’d mentioned it, and he didn’t want to be branded as crazy just as Dream was starting to be kind of friendly, but after a moment he gathered his courage and continued.

“Well um, weird stuff happens,” he said, and George looked up from where he was pouring himself a cup of steaming tea, gaze clear and shrewd. “When she’s wearing it, I mean. Lucky things. Not – not amazingly so, just that – like, the other day, she came down from the city and we went out on a picnic, and there were wild swans flying by, even though you never see them around’ here, and it’s the wrong season, anyway. Or, um, when I went up to visit her, these sparrows came and ate leftovers off our plates once we were done at this café, or birds will sing nicely – anyway, it’s just. It almost always has something to do with birds. I just thought it was. Nice.”

“Oh,” Dream said. George had his head down, dark brown hair falling over his face, but Wilbur thought he could see him smiling. Dream sounded cheerful and unsurprised. “Well, I mean, it’s as much because you love her as it is anything to do with the bracelet,” Dream told him, and Wilbur nodded slowly even though he didn’t have any idea what the fuck that meant.

“I should get home,” he said.

“Okay,” Dream agreed, and this time Wilbur heard it, the unspoken _come back soon_. When he turned at the door, Dream was getting up from his chair, back turned to Wilbur, talking in a low voice to George, but George was watching him, and as Wilbur hesitated, he nodded, just once.

Truce, Wilbur thought and left.

When he got home, Nick had already arrived back from the supermarket and was in the shower. Wilbur put out a microwaved meal for the both of them, because they generally ate pretty early, both of them hungry after a day at work, and opened the TV guide, flipping idly through it. There wasn’t anything he was particularly interested in, but he guessed Nick would talk him into watching Die Hard – since it was on – anyway.

Nick emerged, toweled his hair dry, and Wilbur pushed a tray of microwaved pasta across the counter to him. “Bon appétit! Oh masterful chef, of le micro-wave do tell me your secrets,” Nick remarked jokingly, as he proceeded to give the plastic tray a dramatic sniff, “smells gourmet.” Nick said sensually as he shot an overly-dramatic wink at Wilbur who was losing his shit. 

“Yo–you can’t– smell gourmet Nick” Wilbur stuttered out between his laughs. 

“Oh yes but _babygirl_ , I can” Nick replied whilst also attempting to stifle his laughter. He shot a final eyebrow wiggle to end the bit.

After a few minutes of laugher at Nick’s strange flirty food connoisseur bit, Wilbur noticed Nick’s face fall tiredly. “Long day?” he inquired sympathetically, and Nick sighed, rolling his shoulders back.

“Long _week_ , long _year_ ,” he said. “Also there were kids.” He poked miserably at his meal. “I hate kids.”

“I know,” Wilbur said. He paused for a moment, and then burst out, “So, I think we should go to the new shop tomorrow.”

“Whatshisface’s shop?” Nick raised his eyebrows. “The weird schizo guy? Unicorn Man?”

“Dream,” Wilbur said, firmly. “And he’s not so bad. Just a little cryptic. I stopped in today – they’re sort of, uh, okay, once you get used to them—”

“They?” Nick repeated. His eyebrows went higher. Wilbur’s fingers itched for a camera.

“Oh, yeah. Uh, the Davidson kid – George? He works there, too.” Wilbur stopped, curious, and asked, “What’s his deal, anyway? I never knew him.”

“Okay, first off,” Nick says, dryly, “He’s like a couple month's older than me, so please don’t call him a kid. And I don’t know what his deal is. Um, I think he just, like, hates the world or something? Self-righteous angst and such. Like Zak a year ago only without actual reasons, and times a _million_.”

Wilbur laughed and then frowned. “I don’t know, he didn’t seem like that, though. It was weird. Does he not talk to his family or something?”

“I don’t know what the whole story is, Wilbur,” Nick told him. “I just know what people have told me. I think he moved out or something, had a big fight, and since then has been hell-bent on proving his superiority to the rest of the town? I don’t _know_. All I remember is that about a year and a half ago there was a big fuss because he lost it at, like, half of the council.”

“Huh,” Wilbur said. “It’s weird. He seems to like Dream.”

Nick shrugged, looking suddenly tired. “Some people are just like… you know. Think they’re bigger than Cherry Hill, but won’t leave it because they’re scared of the city. It’s not surprising that he’s attached himself to the first new thing that’s come along.”

“Wow,” Wilbur said, surprised. “I didn’t know you like, genuinely didn’t like him or whatever—”

Nick sighed in exasperation. “I don’t,” he said. “Dislike him, I mean, I don’t think _anything_ about him. Well, except when I was a kid, I think I thought he was pretty funny then. But I haven’t spoken to him since we were both five years old and Mom stopped taking me to church, seriously. I don’t have an opinion about him. I’m just saying what I’ve heard.”

“Okay, then,” Wilbur said. “So you’ll come in with me to see what’s going on there tomorrow, then?”

Nick regarded him suspiciously. “What’s in it for me?”

Wilbur shrugged. “Die Hard’s on tonight,” he said nonchalantly, and Nick grinned, leaning across the counter to shake his hand.

“Deal,” he confirmed.

Wilbur had clearly become weirdly attached to the little shop, so as promised, by one o’clock the next day, Nick was showered and dressed and ready for the walk up and then down the hill to Dream’s shop. Wilbur was bouncing a little with excitement, and Nick laughed at him.

“Seriously,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s so special about this place?”

Wilbur grinned sheepishly, turning a little bit pink. “I just really like it,” he said. “And like – the bird’s thing—”

Nick groaned. “Oh God, not the fuckin _birds_ ” he said, reaching out to shove Wilbur a little so that he stumbled on the way down their garden path. “You’re not still set on this, are you? You think there might be magical flying carpets in there, as well?”

“We should ask,” Wilbur said, still grinning all over his stupid face, and Nick narrowed his eyes because Wilbur didn’t sound like he was joking.

It was a warm summer’s day outside, hot enough that Nick was a little bit sweaty by the time they reached the shop and wishing that he had put on one of his bandanas this morning to keep his hair back from his face (he didn’t care what Wilbur said. He thought they were stylish). As they pushed open the door, though (there was a sound above them that sounded suspiciously like a group of hysterical teenage girls bursting into laughter, but when Nick looked up, there wasn’t anyone there), the cool air of the shop hit them, and Nick finally felt comfortable.

Then he had to stop and stare because George Davidson was standing on the stool and talking very loudly over the top of Unicorn Ma—Dream, gesturing widely and beaming, and both of their voices were rising and mingling, clearly trying to get the upper hand of the conversation.

“You have it so _wrong_ ,” George said, “So, so, _so_ wrong, and you are pinching it straight from that crappy adaptation of Peter Pan, and I don’t care how cute you think Jeremy Sumpter is, I _will not stand for it—_ ”

“I’m sorry,” Dream interrupted, getting control of the conversation for a moment, “Tell me again where you met all these mermaids that you’re basing your knowledge on—” and George burst into laughter again and opened his mouth, and then he noticed them, because he fell off the stool with a loud clatter. Nick started forward because that was a bit of a fall, the stool was pretty tall, but George was already scrambling up, not even complaining a little. Nick went up on his tiptoes and noticed, to his astonishment, that there were a couple of large, soft-looking beanbags settled around the stool behind him, apparently expressively for that purpose. It must be very annoying, he thought, to have to trip your way over them to get to the stool. Showed forethought, though.

The shop was suddenly quiet, George blank-faced, and Dream had his head ducked, mask pulled over his eyes. Why was he even wearing a mask, Nick wondered, although he had to admit that it did a pretty good job of shadowing the way his mouth was twitching.

“Um,” Wilbur said, and his voice was thick with withheld laughter too. “Hi, again.”

“Hello,” Dream said, politely. George had turned away, slightly, wasn’t looking at anyone. He had an excellent poker face, Nick thought uneasily, something guilty and unexpected twinging in his stomach, but his eyes looked dark and miserable. “What can I help you with?”

“I brought Nick to meet you properly,” Wilbur said. “He’s my roommate. Nick, Dream, Dream, Nick.” He hesitated for a moment and then added, “And you know George.”

George raised his chin and turned back to them, spine straight, eyes dark and defiant. He looked, Nick realized, startled, like he was just waiting to be cut down. There was that unpleasant feeling in Nick’s stomach again.

“Yes,” he said and grinned in a determined (and possibly manic) sort of way. “Though the last time we talked you were considerably shorter.”

“Um,” George answered, sounding supremely surprised. He looked at Nick with a strange, intent expression; almost _hungry_ , Nick thought, and he thought about something else that he hadn’t told Wilbur, last night: that sometimes, George would come into the supermarket and pick out strange things, the wilted vegetables, the milk that was nearly out of date, and he would keep his head ducked low and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye and that sometimes if it was late and Nick was tired and not censoring his thoughts, he would think that maybe there wasn’t anyone in the world who was lonelier than George Davidson.

Nick remembered, suddenly, playing with George before he went to school and met Wilbur (who had always been in the year above him but was nice enough to play with Nick anyway), hours spent on the lawn of the church. Nick had always thought it was annoying, and he’d hated it when his mom announced her intention to be on the church restoration committee for a year, but George had known all the secret places to hide and explore, the tombs to climb down into. Their games of hide and seek had been legendary. He remembered, too, the acute jealousy and wonder on George’s face when Nick had told him that he’d be going to school that fall.

He thought about the time a year ago he’d stopped by the family house for dinner with his mom and dad. “Big fuss at work today,” Nick’s dad had told him. “The youngest Davidson boy’s moved out of home in bad circumstances, and he turned up to talk to his mom today.”

The next day, Nick had been walking down the street when he saw George, head ducked down, hands tucked in his hoodie pockets, glaring at the street. For a moment, Nick had almost let him pass by, but then he had remembered playing with George as a kid, laughing, and he remembered that George was his age, and tried to think about what it would be like. He had put out a hand and caught George’s arm without thinking, said, “Hey, hey. You alright?”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” George had spat, and wrenched away from him.

Now, Nick wondered how much condescension George had already put up with. He smiled unsurely at him and asked, “Do you still eat apple pies?”

George barked a laugh, uncertain but still real. Nick thought about the way George had looked when he and Wilbur had come in, the way his laughter then had lit up all his face, and he thought that George looked nice when he laughed like that, that Nick liked it, that he would like it more if he could be the cause of it.

Dream darted glances between all of them, brow furrowed, looking confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you want to buy something, Nick?” He sounded a little cold, and Nick started, wondered if maybe they weren’t meant to stand around and just loiter like this if Wilbur had failed to pick up on hints (it wouldn’t be the first time. Wilbur was Nick’s best friend, but he was also incredibly and unbelievably oblivious more often than not).

Nick opened his mouth to say that they would just be on their way, then, had thought they would just stop by, sorry for interrupting, but George got in there first, voice firm, and there was that faint sound of laughter underneath it again. His eyes were bright, Nick noticed.

“Dream,” George said, “When you have people over who want to be your friend, it’s nice to offer them something to drink.”

“Oh,” Dream said, and flushed, pink and pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed reading this chapter, feel free to leave a kudos and a bookmark! Also leave any feedback, thoughts, criticism, or suggestions in the comments, I'd love to hear all of it!


	3. Happy Tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I've been pumping out chapters pretty quickly, and it's been so much fun! I think this has been my favorite chapter to write so far, it just felt very magical to me, almost nostalgic, I hope you guys like it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Also minor title change, I found out that there is a Ninjago fic called Up on Cherry Hill and like, y'know... don't wanna steal their thunder lmao, so now it's just Cherry Hill!

“I don’t entirely understand,” Dream said on Sunday night, as they were closing up the shop (which consisted of flipping the sign on the door and pulling down the blinds. Nothing ever _happened_ in the shop, barely anybody came in, and George found he didn’t mind in the slightest not having a weekend, especially when Dream had told him he could take a few days off whenever he wanted. George thought, he just liked hanging out with Dream, even if Dream had developed a habit of sleeping through the days. George kind of thought that Dream needed someone to look after him properly and make him go to sleep at night).

“Understand what?” George asked, sitting back in an armchair and kicking his legs up on a table (after checking quickly that it wasn’t the one that kicked back).

“Wilbur and Nick,” Dream clarified, trailing his hand absently along a shelf of books. Four of the books purred, and six of them sent up happy little puffs of golden dust which settled in Dream’s hair and on his shoulders. George decided against telling him. “I mean, I thought you said that Nick didn’t like you?”

“We only knew each other when we were five,” George said, and then looked down, smiling, because it had been a surprise to him too, after all, the fierce, persistent way Nick had made conversation with him all Saturday afternoon, talking about music and school and people they both knew, looking weirdly proud every time George laughed. “I guess he changed his mind.”

“I still don’t like it,” Dream said, huffing. “All of a sudden he wants to be your friend, and it’s just, it seems a bit odd. Also, his eyes are very dark, have you noticed? I knew an evil witch with black eyes once.” George tuned out after a moment because Dream did tend to ramble for a while once he got started on people or things he had once known (and George had begun to suspect, judging by the suspicious slant of Dream’s mouth on occasion, that half of these stories were at the very least _mildly_ fabricated), but he started listening soon enough to hear as Dream concluded, in a huff, “—and anyway, I found you first,” and then turned bright red.

George erupted in laughter, he flung himself up out of the chair and went over to the an old phonograph in the corner. He flipped over the nearest record he could find, _Chirp- C-418_ , he didn't recognize the record, but he didn't care. He had noticed that it was generally what he felt like listening to, and sure enough, a bright, cheerful melody came out, the rhythm tightening around George’s spine and making his feet tap.

He went over to Dream and grabbed at him. Dream laughed and protested "Oh my God, _George_." He let out something between a wheeze and a laugh. " _What are you doing_?" George ignored, and despite being considerably shorter, he whirled Dream around in a space that was hastily cleared as various books shimmied out of the way, akin to something straight out of a Disney princess film. He danced Dream around the ornate velvet carpet of the whimsical antique shop, swinging his hips obnoxiously enough to make Dream laugh harder. George finally confirmed with a goofy smile that could make anyone ogle, “You did find me first.”

Despite his initial surprise at George's oddly forthright actions, Dream looked at him with a satisfied smirk. His porcelain mask twinkling in the dim yellow light the rusty chandelier radiated from above. “I think it’s good, though,” George confided. “I've been a bit selfish. I think maybe you and I should try and talk to –I mean other people, as well as each other, friends, are good.”

“Yes,” Dream agreed, softly, and George released him.

“So be nice,” he reminded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. _Try and sleep_ , won’t you?”

“Goodnight,” Dream said, which was not any kind of answer at all, but George just picked up his bag from where it had leaned against, a cluttered counter flooded with random store merchandise. He waved, closing the door tight behind him, knowing without checking that it would be locked.

Outside the bakery, Lani was just about to go inside with her younger brother, Tubbo, but she spotted George. “Oh, hello, George,” she greeted, a kind smile upon her face. “I just heard that you were working here.”

“The gossip in this place,” George sighed, rolling his eyes. “Seriously.”

“Zak told me,” Lani said, eyes bright. “Do you like it? I’ve been meaning to stop in, but it’s just been so busy, lately.”

“I like it,” George replied, and then asked, “Are you starting work already?”

“I slept all day,” Lani said, with a sigh. “I’m kind of behind. There’s all tomorrow’s goods to do, and the Watson’s wedding cake, of course—”

George started. “Phil and Kristin are getting married?”

“Oh!” Lani clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at him sympathetically. “Did you not know?”

“No,” George said, feeling a little like he’d been knocked over. “Nobody told me.” Though he wasn't necessarily surprised, both Dream and himself were both notorious outcasts of Cherry Hill, so they were never really on the priority list of who needed to know what in the village.

“Oh,” Lani said, again. Her mouth twisted, and George squirmed, wanting suddenly to be away, back in the safe warmth of the past two days. “Oh, I’m sorry, Geor—”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I don’t even know them that well.” (When he was ten, Phil had come over and babysat for him sometimes, and George as a kid had thought Phil had been to the moon.) “Good luck with the cake.”

“George,” Lani began, but George had already climbed up on his bicycle and was riding away. It was shitty and self-indulgent of him, to still be worked up over this stuff, he thought, and Dream had already been pretty amazing for him, but going home was still the worst part of any day, especially when it didn’t feel like any sort of home at all.

On Monday morning, it was evident that Dream hadn’t slept, once again, and after about half an hour of the drowsiest conversation George had ever sat through, he sent Dream to his favorite armchair (Dream refused to go through the back door to his bed) with the blanket to nap again. It was going to be a quiet day, anyway, George knew; he doubted Nick and Wilbur would stop by. The Watson Wedding was sure to be something everyone in the town would be at.

Despite not knowing how to play any sort of string instrument, George spent most of the day mindlessly plucking away at the ethereal, gold embellished harp Dream kept in the corner of the shop, making up soft melodies as he went along. Sometimes he would hum along, but that seemed to make Dream stir restlessly as if he were about to wake, so George stopped pretty soon. Dream needed his sleep.

He hadn’t expected any customers at all, but around half-past two, the chimes shrieked “WAKE UP, Dream!” (Dream grumbled in his sleep, flipping a rude gesture in their general direction) as Darryl sidled in the door. George jumped up from where he was sprawled across, a second-hand futon, ( _once owned by Alexander The Great, the tag said, but not the one you’re thinking of: $37_ ) in surprise.

“Hey,” George replied, a bit startled. “What’s up?”

“Um,” Darryl said. “Can I come and sit down here? Pretty much everyone else is at the wedding.”

George ignored the twinge in his chest and said, “Sure, come on,” drawing his legs up. He liked Darryl for no particular reason, he liked the awkward, coltish way that Darryl moved, and his brown doe eyes, with glasses slipping down his face. “Why aren’t you at the wedding?” George asked, curious despite himself.

“Oh,” Darryl said, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking kind of embarrassed. He sat down on the futon, crossed his legs and faced George, and George moved so that they were comfortably close, their knees bumping, facing each other. “I don’t like crowds, much. Zak doesn’t either, but he’ll go when it’s a wedding, ‘cos they make him all happy. And then he gets all teary-eyed.”

George grinned. “I bet,” he said because he did have a faint memory of Zak getting teary at a wedding, a long time ago. “Your house a bit too lonely by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Darryl agreed, sheepishly. He looked down and shifted around uncomfortably for a few moments; then, he met George’s eyes, took a deep breath, and burst out, “I think I’m going crazy.”

“What?” George asked, blinking. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean, like,” Darryl began, sounding miserable. He stopped and looked down at his lap, twisting his hands together, and then drew a breath and continued, “I like. Zak’s been doing a lot of painting recently, he, he likes painting with me, especially those paints that he bought here for me– he likes the colors and stuff. And at night, if I wake up after a nightmare or something, I keep thinking that I see the – the things he paints, they come in and talk to me, and cheer me up.”

George couldn’t stop the smile creeping across his face. “What kind of things does Zak paint?”

“Um, like, vampires, and werewolves, and people being killed by vampires and werewolves,” Darryl chirped, offhandedly, and then shook his head at George’s horrified face. “Oh, but I mean, they’re not– they’re not mean or scary or anything, they’re all friendly and happy!”

“Uh-huh,” George said, nodding his head, though he didn't have the slightest inkling of what he was on about. He took a breath and said, not quite sure how to explain things properly, or what Dream wanted him to tell, “Look, I don’t think you’re crazy—”

“Do you have bad dreams a lot?” Dream asked quietly, and George and Darryl both jumped. Dream was hovering nearby, half-awake but in a kind mood, and Darryl stared at him silently for a moment pulling himself together.

“Yeah,” he responded quietly. “I – almost every night.”

“Wow,” Dream exclaimed softly. “That's tough.” George ducked his head, trying to restrain a giggle at Dream's bluntness, but Darryl didn’t seem to find the everyday slang at odds with the rest of Dream’s appearance at all.

“Um, yeah,” Darryl said. “Zak’s good at – at making them go away, and I think, so are the paintings, except that’s probably not real, but we can’t, we can’t make them stop.”

“The paintings are fine,” Dream assured, firmly. “You’re not going crazy. Don’t worry about them. If they want to talk to you, it’s probably just ‘cos they like you and think you’re cool.” (George was almost sure that he imagined the pointed look Dream flicked at him, but he glared just to make sure.) “But,” Dream said, trying his best to be consoling. “Bad dreams are horrible. I get them, sometimes. I’m sorry you do too.”

Darryl shrugged. “My mom used to say that I’d grow out of them, who knows maybe I still have a chance,” he announced with hope.

“Probably,” Dream agreed. Then he went out the back and came back with tea and biscuits and a story about how, when he was living in New York, he was almost sure that he saw Batman one time, and Darryl perked up (once he had explained – a little condescendingly – that Batman didn’t live in New York City, and it had been decided that possibly he was on holiday, or just on loan) enough to discuss it properly.

It was almost four when Darryl finally said, regretfully, “I should go. Zak made me promise I’d come to say congratulations to Phil and Kristin at one stage.”

“Okay,” George said. “It was nice talking to you, dude. You should come by again.”

“I will,” Darryl agreed, brightening. “Bye, George! Bye, Dream!”

“Wait a sec,” Dream said, and disappeared into the darkest corner of the shop, rummaging around in a bookshelf. He returned holding a small wooden box with a painted flower on the lid carefully in his hands, and George recognized it immediately – though he couldn’t say how – as a music box. “You like music,” Dream said, “don’t you?”

Darryl flushed, looking at the box with poorly disguised longing. “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t have any—”

“This thing just won’t sell,” Dream said sadly, looking down at it. “I think it’s pretty, but it has a habit of getting stuck and not opening for most people. You’d be doing me a favor, taking it off my hands. It’s just taking up space.”

“Um, well,” Darryl said, and pushed his glasses up again, looking flustered. “Thank you, then. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Dream replied, and Darryl got up and waved a little awkwardly, walking away.

At the door, he paused and looked back. “How d’you know it’ll open for me if it gets stuck?” he asked. “I’m not very strong.”

“I have a feeling,” Dream said with a smirk.

Weirdly, George discovered that he didn’t mind that much when Wilbur and Nick dropped around anymore. Nick looked at George with a weird, fiercely intent sort of gaze, and George got strange feelings now and again that Nick was trying to adopt him or something of the sort. If it had been out of pity, then George would hate him immediately but he could sort of tell that it wasn’t that simple.

“Maybe he just likes you,” Dream said, and George ducked his head and grinned.

It was strangely easy, in any case, to accommodate them into their lives, and it did not seem such a huge change as George had feared. The days drifted past in a gentle sort of daze, and George felt a little like he was eight years old and in the middle of his summer holidays, again: nothing happened, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and time seemed to stretch on forever.

There were highlights every now and then, moments that stood out. On his sixth day working in the shop, the teapot wasn’t in its usual spot on the counter, and when George asked where it was Dream only waved vaguely towards the door that led out the back of the shop. George stopped and asked, carefully, “You don’t mind me going in there?”

“No, ‘course not,” Dream said, absently. “Just don’t knock over the thing in the sink, it’s still brewing.”

The backdoor opened up onto a long, dark passage, and George started down it a little uncertainly, not sure what to expect. The first door he tried opened up onto a huge room, far, far bigger than the outside of the shop should have allowed. The room was made entirely out of victorian-era style stained glass windows, the frames of the windows were embellished with carvings of lions and unicorns. The high ceiling rose like a cathedral. The room was lined with shelves, going all the way around and then up onto a second, higher platform. Plants and vines were everywhere, some hung, some on the shelves, and some spilled onto the floor. There was a huge spiral staircase in the middle of the room, directing itself onto the multiple platforms of the room, and then a huge desk piled with all kinds of books and parchments and what looked like a chemistry kit, and just in front of it a gigantic globe of the world. George wanted desperately to go and explore, but he was on a mission (it was important, too, Dream was fostering a horrible caffeine addiction in him), and it felt a little too nosy – or even dangerous – without Dream there to explore with him. He closed the door.

The next room was comparatively tiny, and also lined with shelves, upon which hundreds of bottles and jars of various amounts of mysterious liquids sat with dusty little labels in front of them, only to be dimly lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling; the room after that was a bathroom, with a huge, comfortable-looking claw-foot tub and a golden shower head; after that, there was a small series of rooms that George hesitantly called living rooms, simply by virtue of them having various items of comfortable furniture in them. One of them had a neglected-looking piano, but George passed it reluctantly by.

When he finally opened the door leading into what was unmistakably a kitchen, he was a little taken aback by how normal it looked. There were a fridge, a rickety table and chairs, and some kitchen counters, and apart from the large vat of smelly, colorless liquid sitting in the sink, the whole thing seemed ordinary. The most magical thing there was a bowl of persimmons, even though it wasn’t the season for them. George grabbed two and the teapot from off the counter (he didn’t bother filling it with hot water, though he did take the pot of sugar to put on the counter because Dream invariably magicked it too bitter), and then wound his way back up to the shop at the front.

“Dude,” he said, “Your house is amazing,” and chucked a persimmon at Dream’s head. Dream dropped it, of course, and then George laughed at his crappy hand-eye coordination, and everything seemed magical and real at once, which was how George liked it best.

A few days later, Dream insisted that George take a day off, despite George telling him that he’d rather be at the shop than at home. In the end, George left feeling a little mournful, and only after writing his number on four or five post-it notes and leaving it around the shop, telling Dream to call or text if he needed anything.

He spent his day wandering aimlessly around the house. He was just about to start half-heartedly cleaning the kitchen (which has gotten really, ridiculously dusty) when he was distracted by a tapping on the window. When he turned, a brown (though George had a feeling it was red)-breasted robin was peering at him through the glass, and George moved wide-eyed towards it, opening the window uncertainly.

There was a tiny sliver of paper attached to its leg, and George unfurled it to read, _where’s the sugar again_?

He laughed and gave up on any attempt at a day off, riding his bike back to Dream’s shop. For a moment he wondered again, still a little unsure, if Dream would be annoyed, but when he walked in Dream glanced up and looked so grateful that George stopped worrying at all.

The next day, Zak came in, a little awkward but mostly smiling hugely, his eyes bright. “Guys,” he said, “I don’t know what it is about that – that music box that you gave Darryl, but he hasn’t had a nightmare, since.”

Dream and George exchanged a swift glance, George trying not to giggle, Dream wearing an extremely smug smile. “That’s good to hear,” Dream said, and Zak laughed out loud, short and exuberant.

“I know there’s something about it,” he said. “Won’t you let me—”

“No, it was a gift,” Dream declined, and then paused, considering. “But if you would like, there’s a ceiling that needs painting.” He tilted his head upwards to the peeling paint above.

The shop was closed for the next week, but George, Wilbur, and Nick still came to help out, painting where Zak and Darryl directed them to, while Dream wandered about and made sure that all the items in the shop were safely covered with white sheets (he’d tried to help out with the painting at first, too, but had been soon consigned to floor duty, his shaky hands had rendered him hopeless at staying in the lines).

Zak painted stories out across the huge ceiling: vampires skulking around corners to spy wistfully on the enchanting unicorns Darryl had drawn, frolicking on green fields, George rode bareback on one of them, face thrown up to the sun. An arid desert, dry and bare of life except where a collection of small, inquisitive desert mice were watching Dream read a book, his feet in the air, apparently unconcerned by the surroundings; across one stretch the green fields of the unicorns faded into a dark black night with a million stars, and cycling through them was Wilbur with Nick on his handlebars. Other parts of it were just bursts of color, suns exploding and raining down silver ash, whole lifetimes scrawling across the ceiling. Zak judged it “a bit more cheerful than we usually do, don't 'cha think Darryl?”, and Nick said uncertainly, “Does it look kind of… alive, to you?” Dream only smiled. The mural was splendid, small fragments of each painter's personality were on full display, swirling into a curious cacophony of charm and beauty. _A curious cacophony for a curious store_.

The night after the painting was done, Wilbur, Nick, Zak, and George stayed up late with Dream, talking until the early hours of the morning. Dream had drifted away at some point, probably to bed, and George was exhausted; he only felt a little bit guilty when instead of heading home, he snuck down the corridor, half-heartedly looking for Dream’s bedroom (surely he wouldn’t mind George stealing a little bit of space). Instead, he found one of the living rooms, and he sank gratefully on the couch there, rolling over and falling asleep almost instantly.

In the morning, Dream didn’t seem to notice anything odd about the way George emerged, just passed him a piece of toast and launched into a grumbling complaint about how there was a spot of paint on his hand and he couldn’t remember the right spell to get rid of it, goddamnit.

George propped his chin on his hand, considering. “Did you try soap?” he asked sarcastically, and Dream perked up.

“Oh my God, _right_! Thanks, Georgie” Dream said, beaming. George let out a little chuckle at his friend’s forgetfulness, punctuated with a tranquil smile.

It became a habit to spend the night on Dream’s couch. George felt a little guilty about it – Dream was too absent-minded to ever notice properly, and it felt sort of like he was invading Dream’s home – but it was so much more preferable to his own lonely, unfriendly house that he’d push aside such guilt for the sake of a comfortable night’s sleep, and a little less loneliness.

It was Nick, of course, who finally picked up on it. He’d started coming down to the shop every day for his lunchbreak, and they all ate together, texting Wilbur to see if he could make it down, too. George liked it because more and more, he was really enjoying Nick and Wilbur’s company, and also because it reminded Dream of such novel concepts as regular mealtimes.

One lunchtime, though, when Wilbur and Dream were talking kind of lazily about a book they’d both read, laughing and distracted, Nick swallowed his mouthful of pasta and said, “You know, I always seem to see your bike outside the shop.”

“I work here, dumbass,” George reminded him, raising his eyebrows.

“No, I mean, it’s always there,” Nick said. “When I pass by for the early shifts in the morning or go home late, or—”

George swallowed hard, pulled his posture straight. “I’m not – not going through his shit or whatever you think,” he said, coldly. “I just—”

“No, God, George!” Nick interrupted, looking horrified. “I wasn’t saying you were, I just – Dream doesn’t notice when people need help sometimes, huh? Maybe you need to—”

“Need to what, Nick?” George asked, tiredly. “Fix things up with my parents? With the _town_? They don’t even know who I _am_ when they’re not hating me.”

Nick’s mouth twisted downwards. “I know,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry.” George shrugged, and Nick looked straight at him and said, “They will, though.” George raised an eyebrow, and Nick looked a little suspicious. “Anyway,” he mumbled. “I’m glad I do,” and George blinked at him in astonishment, startled warmth spreading in his chest.

That night, Dream flipped the sign on the door to _closed_ and then turned around, held out his hand. “Come on,” he said. “I wanna show you something.”

George walked over to him, a little bewildered, and then, when Dream waved it impatiently, took Dream’s hand. Dream’s fingers curled warm and long around George’s, and he led George through the back door of the shop and into the dark passage beyond.

“Library,” he said, and the door opened without either of them touching it. George looked at Dream, confused, but Dream continued onward without clarifying, said, “Storeroom,” to the narrow one with the cupboards and then, “Bathroom.”

“Lounge,” Dream said, “Lounge, this used to be a music room but it got a bit cluttered and I think my guitars are somewhere else now – you know the kitchen…” He turned right when they got to the kitchen, going on where George hadn’t been before, and the doors flew open as they passed.

“My study,” Dream said, as they passed yet another room lined with bookshelves and containing a messy desk. “Another bathroom, I think I forgot I had already made one – my bedroom, here.” (It was a small, bare room, with an equally small bed, and for some reason, the lack of anything in it made George suddenly sad. It looked like Dream barely used it.)

“And here,” Dream said, stopping in front of the last closed door. He opened it, looking suddenly a little shy. “Your room.”

George swallowed hard. Then he took a step inside. There was a large wardrobe (“I can help you move your stuff over,” Dream said, low and anxious in his ear) and the floor was covered in a thick, soft-looking carpet; there were three empty bookshelves along one wall, and a massive rack with room for CDs and records. There was a desk (“I know it’s small,” Dream said quickly, “but if you want, I can make another study thing, I just thought bedrooms that are too big can be a bit cold,”), and a four-poster bed that looked like something from a storybook, huge and comfortable and made up with a midnight blue quilt cover and sheets, gold threading in them (“I found them in a Chinese marketplace,” Dream said, still uncertain, “They – they remind me of you, sorta, I haven’t had anything else to use them for before,”).

The real thing that got George’s attention, though, was the ceiling. When he looked up, his breath caught in his throat. It was a night sky, a little like the one Zak had painted out in the main area of the shop, but different in the way that it felt _real_. The stars twinkled and shone, and dark clouds passed across it. George could start to pick out unfamiliar constellations, nothing like any he’d ever seen before.

“Um,” Dream said. “It’s pretty stupid really, you don’t have to – I just, Nick said that maybe, and you seem like you’d like stars – I’m not gonna like, force you to live with me or anything, though.”

George turned around and threw himself at Dream, hanging off his neck and clinging on tight. “Thank you,” George mumbled, holding back happy tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes, as he burrowed his head into Dream's muscular chest. 

For the first time, Dream took off his mask in front of George, though his friend was too busy trying to hold back his tears to notice. Dream wrapped his arm's around George's waist and ducked his face into George's silky brown hair. He felt the soft texture against his cheeks and beamed contently, tucking his mask back on promptly before George could notice. As he felt his own happy tear roll down his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to leave any suggestions and criticism in the comments, I'd love to hear it! Don't forget to leave a kudos/bookmark if you're enjoying the series!


	4. Beautiful Boy(s)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everyone! Sorry for being a bit of a slowpoke with this chapter, but allow me to compensate for that with the longest chapter I've written so far (8,500k words) ~tada~ insert jazz hands. Anyway, I really liked writing this chapter, and I hope you all like it too!

Nick could hear the music two shops away, drifting out into the early evening, and he turned to raise an eyebrow at Wilbur. Wilbur grinned back at him and then hummed along cheerfully, _you don’t know how lucky you are, boy_ and Nick laughed for no real reason other than it was Friday and it was good to have friends to be visiting, good to be alive in the slow days and slower nights of Cherry Hill.

The door was unlocked, even though it was an hour past the time when George usually shut it up. When they stepped inside, they were greeted with the sight of Dream and George sprawled out spread-eagled on a cleared patch of floor, eyes closed and breathing slowly, while the record player blasted cheerfully beside them. George was mouthing along with the words quietly.

“Dudes?” Nick asked as he raised his voice above the music. Dream frowned and made a shushing gesture but didn’t say anything; George grinned, opening his eyes, and sat up.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Sorry, he hasn’t heard much of our music.”

“SHUSH,” Dream said, looking cross. “ _I’m listening_!”

Wilbur laughed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he lay down on the ground, folding his arms behind his head and kicking his legs out on the floor. Nick laughed down at them all but didn’t resist when George crooked a finger, fitting himself into the last stretch of space and closing his eyes.

It was peaceful, lying there and listening to one of his favorite albums, but after a while, Nick’s mind started wandering, and he found himself thinking about what George had said: _much of our music_. Which, now that Nick thought about it, was a pretty weird way to phrase something. Though Nick discarded that idea since George’s parents are British, and he was homeschooled; meaning George had always had an accent, and often phrased things weirdly. Oddly enough though, this felt different.

When the album came to an end, he sat up before George could reach for another record, and said, “Hey, can we take a break for a moment?”

“Oh, please,” George said, even as Dream looked disgruntled. “We’ve been listening since like… ten in the morning? Seriously, Dream, you fucking perfectionist.”

“It’s really good!” Dream protested. “I want to hear it all in order!”

“Just stop for a little while,” George told him, propping his chin on his knees. “For me. _Please_.”

“Well,” Dream said, folding his arms. “Well, fine.” George widened his eyes at Dream’s annoyed face, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment before they both burst out laughing at the same moment.

“Freaks,” Wilbur said, affectionately, and George grinned.

“Hey,” Nick said, refusing to be sidetracked. “What did you mean, Dream hasn’t heard much of our music?”

George’s face went suddenly serious, and he exchanged a look with Dream. Dream looked a little embarrassed and George said, “You forgot they didn’t know just now, huh?”

“Maybe,” Dream said defensively, and then added quickly, “You did, too!”

“Um,” Wilbur said, looking from one to the other, and Nick frowned. “Can we be mysterious after Nick and I know what’s going on?”

“It’s kind of a hard thing to say,” George said. He looked at Dream as if searching for confirmation, and Dream nodded and made a little gesture like go on. “Um, okay, so first off, Dream’s not… from here.”

“Cherry Hill?” Wilbur asked, a little bewildered. “We know that.”

“No,” George said. “No, I mean he’s not from this _world_.”

Nick blinked. “Uh,” he said, “is that meant to mean something to you, George? ‘Cos I gotta tell you, it doesn’t make anything any clearer for me.”

“George means,” Dream said, softly, “That I was born in… not another universe because we share this one, but – it’s like, a different fabric to this world. I can’t explain it properly.”

Wilbur asked, slowly, “What is it called then Mr. Alien man?” and George smiled and looked down, a strange mix of awe and gratitude on his face.

“Faerie,” Dream said.

For a moment, nobody spoke, the shop quiet and still, except for the sound of the wind whistling outside. Nick had been sure, he thought, that the night was a warm one, one of the last nights of summer, nothing moving.

Then Wilbur said, “So you’re—a fairy?”

“A magician,” Dream corrected, and did a funny little shrug, like, _what can you do_?

“Pardon?” Wilbur replied. Nick sighed, pushing his hair back behind his ear.

“I don’t know what bit you two are planning,” he said. “But there’s no such thing as magic.”

George looked horrified and he raised his hands and clapped, deliberately. Wilbur snorted, covering his mouth and giggling a little hysterically. Dream rolled his eyes.

“You know that’s a made-up story, right, George?” he asked, smiling a little crookedly. 

“I was just making sure,” George said. “Can’t hurt to be careful. We don’t want you swooning on us.”

“Okay, then,” Dream drawled, and Nick looked at the easy way they interacted, the way George seemed to be rubbing off on Dream with his patterns of speech, and wondered what kind of joke they were playing. Dream looked straight at him as if he had heard it – god, Nick thought, now he was just freaking himself out – and looked suddenly serious.

“There is,” Dream said, “Such a thing.”

Nick shook his head. “This isn’t a very funny bit,” he said. “You guys should have like, gotten someone to dress up as a ghost or something, this isn’t even remotely believable.”

“A ghost?” Dream echoed, sounding interested, and George cut over him quickly with,

“ _No_ , Dream.”

“Fine, then,” Dream replied, sounding put out. “What about how I showed you?”

“We’re all in t-shirts, it’ll be freezing,” George said, and seriously, this joke didn’t even make _sense_. “Just – oh, I know, what about the paintings on the ceiling?”

“Oh!” Dream exclaimed, looking pleased. “Yeah, good idea.” Then he pointed up at the ceiling and twisted his wrist a little awkwardly.

Nick followed his pointing hand automatically and then blinked, rubbing his eyes with his hands, blinking again, trying to look properly and see anything except what was currently going on. The pictures on the ceiling were _moving_ , Wilbur pedaling his bike across and unicorns breaking into a gallop, Dream swaying his feet slightly in the desert.

“Oh my God,” Wilbur whispered, taken aback.

“Yeah,” George said. He sounded happy again, the way he did when Nick laughed at one of his jokes, or when Dream was sleepy and would fall half-asleep leaning on George, nuzzling sort of absently at George’s hair. Nick stared, mouth dry, and then mumbled something to himself that even he couldn’t distinguish, couldn’t understand what he could say in this situation.

“Oh my God,” Wilbur repeated. He sounded a little breathless like he was caught between laughter and fear. “Are you – you’re doing that, Dream?”

“Yes,” Dream confirmed. “I like the unicorns best, Zak painted them well. Except that one there, look, his back leg’s too short,” and sure enough one of the unicorns was galloping after the others with a slightly annoyed expression on its horsey face.

“This is amazing,” Wilbur breathed. Nick watched out of the corner of his eye, unable to look away properly from the ceiling, as Wilbur rolled over onto his stomach and beamed at Dream. “This is – I can’t believe you can _do_ that. I can’t believe it’s real, that—”

“Magic,” George said, soft. “And just when we thought there were no more wonders.” Nick wondered absently if he was the only one who heard I when George said we.

“Well,” Nick said, sitting up. “It’s not _real_.”

George, Wilbur, and Dream looked at him as one, foreheads crinkled as if they didn’t get it. “What?” Wilbur said.

“I mean, it’s pretty awesome,” Nick said, suddenly feeling a lot more cheerful and balanced. “But you’ve got some sort of light thing going on, or a projector somewhere around the place. It’s not _magic_.”

“Um,” Dream said. He twitched his finger and most of the furniture floated up halfway into the air.

“Hidden kind of pulley system,” Nick said. Dream twitched his finger again and Nick floated up to join them. He folded his arms and glared down at them. “Weird spatial illusion,” he said, “Because I still feel like I’m sitting on the ground.”

“Only, you’re sitting on air,” George pointed out, sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

“No, but I am feeling a little dizzy,” Nick said. “Put me down?”

He landed gently, and Dream said, “I’m not – spatial illusions, Nick? What _are_ they?”

“Don’t know,” Nick said. “You’re some kind of mad scientific genius.”

George took one look at Dream and finally burst out laughing, falling half into Wilbur’s lap and cackling gleefully into his knee. “Oh my God, Nick,” he said. “I love you. Please continue.”

“There’s no need to treat me like _I’m_ the crazy one,” Nick said. “You guys are the gullible idiots here.”

“Urm,” Dream said, and clapped his hands. A flock of brightly colored, exotic birds appeared, swooping around the room and then bursting into green and purple flames that matched their plumage.

Nick waited patiently for the fires to burn down and then said, “More of the projection stuff, or possibly you’ve got some special effects technology in here. Did you use to work in Hollywood?”

Dream’s mouth was twitching. He waved his hand again and a steaming plate of hot chips appeared in front of Nick. “You can eat them,” he said.

“Sure I can,” Nick said, rolling his eyes and trying to ignore the scent of chips floating up towards him. “Excuse me if I’m not going to put my hand through a hologram for your amusement, though.”

George started wheezing, he was laughing so hard. Wilbur was grinning delightedly, the way he did when Nick was being particularly moronic and Wilbur was enjoying this display of ineptitude a lot. Nick did not like having that look leveled at him, especially when he was the only person in the room who had not gone utterly _crazy_.

They didn’t stay for much longer after that. Nick extracted himself with the last remains of his dignity and Wilbur followed after him, giggling, over the fright Dream’s clever tricks had provoked in him. “There’s no such thing as magic!” he called, as they left, and then he and Wilbur walked home in the dark together.

“Um, dude?” Wilbur said when they were nearly home. “Did you notice—”

“No such thing as magic!” Nick repeated firmly and ignored the way he appeared to be walking two feet above the ground.

Living in Dream’s house, George thought, was pretty much the coolest thing in the world, but occasionally it did have its shocks. On the third day of living there, the morning after Dream had – attempted to – tell Nick and Wilbur about the whole magic thing, George was in the middle of a shower when Dream burst through the door.

“Dude!” George squeaked, grabbing the curtain and twisting it around him, even though it was gross and cold and uncomfortable. “Kind of naked, here!”

“What was that noise?” Dream asked, bright-eyed, and a little breathless. “Was that – the music—”

“I didn’t hear any music,” George told him, frowning a little bit. He wanted to finish his shower.

“The _singing_ ,” Dream said impatiently. “That was you, right? I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave any spells lying about.”

“Oh,” George said and turned red. “Yeah, sorry, I sing in the shower, can’t train myself out of it.”

“Oh my God,” Dream said. “Oh my God, seriously, wash the shampoo out of your hair and then come quick.”

George blinked but after Dream darted back out the door, moved to do as he was told, hastily washing the shampoo out and getting out of the shower, dressing quickly. Dream had sounded so urgent, and George found himself wondering if something was wrong – but then why ask about the singing? In any case, he hurried, because he didn’t think he’d ever seen Dream so animated before.

Dream was waiting out in the hall for him when he emerged, rubbing at his damp hair, and he turned his biggest, brightest smile on George. George swallowed hard and said, “What’s up?”

“You never told me you could _sing_ ,” Dream said, bouncing on the heels of his feet.

“I – I didn’t know I could?” George said, uncertainly. “I seriously only sing in the shower – and I used to in the choir, sometimes, but only if someone was sick.”

“Georgie,” Dream said. “Your voice, can you – just sing me anything, okay, just, just, please?”

George stared at him for a moment, feeling a little self-conscious, and then he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin: because it was Dream, because it was his best friend, because Dream seemed weirdly and incomprehensibly pleased every day that George was there but this was one of the rare times he asked George for something. George swallowed back the lump in his throat and opened his mouth, sang.

It was nonsense, mostly, because he didn’t have a clear tune in his head; he started half-heartedly working his way through _Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds_ , letting himself go on the chorus, but then he forgot the words of the second verse instead into the chorus of _Beautiful Boy_ because that was the song that had made Dream smile the most last night. When he opened his eyes Dream was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, chin propped on his knees, smiling tenderly up at George.

“Yes,” Dream said when George stumbled to an abrupt halt. “Yes, you can sing.”

George stared at him, wide-eyed, and Dream added, “I knew you had a little bit of _Faerie_ in you.”

George spent the rest of the day being dragged around from room to room by Dream (“Uh, dude, shouldn’t we open the shop at some—” “No!”) while Dream set up strange, delicate-looking instruments. George blinked at them in disbelief and said, “I don’t, I don’t understand. Am I going to do magic?”

“No, I am,” Dream told him. “But I need your voice to do it, I can’t sing the words properly.” He looked suddenly anxious. “You don’t mind doing it, do you? Magic’s a dangerous kind of thing, and I don’t want to force you to—”

“Of course I don’t mind,” George cut in quickly. He grinned, felt it take over his whole face. “I just – I’m glad to help, Dream, I am. I just don’t understand how it works.”

“It’s like – I’ll tell you what to sing,” Dream said. “And you sing it, and it’ll be – if I’m concentrating at the same time, the magic should work. There’s a lot of music in Faerie,” he added, looking over his shoulder as he fiddled with a dial on what looked like a brass compass with thin, delicate hands weaving and wavering over the metal. “People use it all the time, it’s a huge field of study. I did a bit of it, with guitar, but mostly it’s things you have to do with your voice, and I can’t sing.” He shrugged, but George thought beneath it he looked a little hurt, a little disappointed. George resolved to hear him try, one day.

When Dream was done, he handed George a piece of paper. George had been imagining and dreading words in some strange language, weird syllables that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce, but, it looked strangely readable, if nonsensical: 

_They come from beds of lichen green,  
They creep from the mullein’s velvet screen;  
Some on the backs of beetles fly  
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,  
Where the swung in their cobweb hammocks high,  
And now rocked about in the evening breeze;  
And now they throng the moonlight glade,  
Above-below-on every side,  
Their little minim forms arrayed,  
In the tricky pomp of fairy pride._

Dream hummed a tune at him and George hummed it back, grinning at each other until a little while later he judged himself ready to go.

He was stupidly anxious when they started, but the tune was a nice one, and he got into the swing of it, letting his voice swell and fill the house, standing in the center of the library. Everything felt more real than usual, more intense, the hair on George’s arms standing on end, and he breathed in sharply and sang, and the air in front of them was shimmering, the stars filling the room, stories and songs and histories filling the air in front of them and dancing past, like ghosts or fairytales.

Finally, Dream nodded through the haze of magic, and George let the last note die. It took a moment for him to regain his breath; when he opened his eyes, Dream was smiling at him.

“What did it do?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Dream told him. “You’re – not magic, so even with me helping, we couldn’t achieve anything with nursery rhymes and such, not here.”

George looked down and tried not to feel too crestfallen. Dream crossed the floor to him and curled an arm around his shoulders, pressing into his side. He stared out across the room as if he could still see the glow of dancing shapes, of magic.

“So it was pointless,” George grumbled.

“Yes,” Dream agreed. “But wasn’t it beautiful?”

Wilbur thought that maybe he was just a little too used to habits; living by them, falling into them, getting accustomed to new ones. Something as strange and unbelievable as magic should by rights have shaken them up; but instead, it was just another thing to settle into, Dream’s magic just another part of him, and by extension, Wilbur’s life.

It was certainly a cool habit to be used to, anyway. Wilbur would come by in the afternoons and Dream and George would be arguing lazily or listening to music, or maybe just one of them there, the other having disappeared for a little while (“You don’t ever get sick of each other?” Nick asked one time, laughing as George dragged Dream around the shop in a clumsy waltz, and Dream just smiled, lips upturned and secretive). After a while, Nick would join them, too, and it became natural to hang out there, to only return home late at night, or not at all, crashing on Dream’s couches or in hammocks that Dream would magic out of nowhere (“Hidden system of pulleys,” Nick insisted, who continued to maintain that magic wasn’t real and that Dream was simply a very, very clever inventor).

Habits that were more unusual than others, sure, but habits nonetheless. After a while, they all got a little bit used to the things that happened when they snooped around the shop and touched things that shouldn’t be touched, like the time Wilbur got accidentally transported to a desert oasis and spent an hour or so wandering around aimlessly, or when George blew experimentally on a tin whistle and spent the rest of the week warbling like a lark. The things that happened to Nick officially Did Not Happen at all, but Nick adapted too, enough that he could tell George off for agreeing (persistently, and with an ever-optimistic grin) to be in some of Dream’s more experimental spells.

(“Didn’t I _tell_ you so?” he cried, and George’s hair was blue for a month.)

Occasionally Dream amused them by tricking Nick into leaving with some small enchantment on him, so that his bandana changed color every few hours (the days slowly but surely edging into autumn), or that there was a small nest of birds in his hair the day he went for dinner with his family.

“It’s a sort of magic all on its own,” Dream would say sometimes, watching with his chin propped on his hand as Nick railed at the three of them about dormant electrical currents and wind and tide patterns.

On Sundays, they closed the shop, at George’s insistence that Dream couldn’t be open _al_ l the time. They used up the last month of summer in the best way they can think of – going outside, wandering through the meadows and countryside surrounding Cherry Hill, teaching Dream the stupid little things he didn’t seem to know anything about, like how to play Frisbee or dive bomb into the lake. Mostly the days were as normal as anything could be around Dream (though magical things inevitably happened, much as Nick tried to ignore them: after Dream touched it, their Frisbee never got stuck in a tree again, and after his first swim in the lake there was an inexplicable growth of lotus blossoms). Dream would sometimes talk them into helping him collect mushrooms and other potion ingredients, and in exchange, he’d tell them stories about gnomes and sprites and other “fairytales”, Nick would say – “history,” Dream corrected, grinning.

Wilbur liked being a part of the four of them may be more than anything that had ever happened to him before. It was like a tiny secret that he carried with him everywhere he went, the knowledge that at the end of a day taking easy, boring shots with a camera and eyes that longed to do more, he could walk in a door and be seized and danced around the room to _The Way You Make Me Feel_ —

(Dream frowned, watching George twirl Wilbur under his arm, and then paused the stereo, said, “I don’t get it. Your expressions make no sense. Why would knocking someone off their feet be a good thing? It sounds kind of mean."

Wilbur started laughing and Nick grinned, said, "I would have thought you'd have more trouble understanding 'you really turn me on'."

George turned red. "Oh, no," he said. "We've already listened to most of Prince, so, been there, done that.")

—or coaxed into making a cake, because George and Dream had already burned their first three attempts, and they were too hungry to wait for Nick to arrive—

(Cooking with Dream was always a dangerous experience. “George,” Wilbur said, glaring, his arms full of ingredients and foot propping open the door of the fridge, “If you could just _help_ me carry some of this stuff, I’m about to drop the eggs—”

“If _you_ could just do it in two _trips_ , I’m trying to turn the goddamn oven on,” George countered, and Dream glanced up from where he was studying the recipe book with a look of confusion.

“Oh, hey, let me help,” he offered, and before Wilbur could open his mouth Dream twitched a finger and all the ingredients floated up into the air and began to drift leisurely towards the counter, which was all very well, except that Wilbur went with them, uselessly kicking at the air and bumping his head on the ceiling.)

—or being forced to sit and comfort a fretful Dream, because George had disappeared at lunchtime and wasn’t back, only to open the door later that night to a guilty-looking George holding a tiny black kitten.

(Dream glared at it and sneezed deliberately. He said, coldly, “You know, all that stuff about familiars is rubbish.”

George said, cheerful and unrepentant, “Who said anything about a familiar? She’s so _cute_!”

In the end, despite Dream’s protests and (feigned) allergies, the kitten was promptly adopted and spent the evening being stared at by George and Wilbur as it wandered around and bumped into furniture. Dream was grimly pleased when he got his way on one aspect, at least – despite George, Nick, and Wilbur’s attempts to give it a _normal_ name, in the end, Dream’s name was the one that stuck, and The Thing was a cheerful albeit accident-prone addition to the household.

George insisted he was, anyway, even if he did spend most of his time at Lani's, where no one would forget to feed or cuddle him. All things – kittens included – had a habit of getting lost in Dream’s endless corridors.)

Of course, it was stupid to imagine that everyone in Cherry Hill but them would continue to ignore Dream forever, and eventually, people began to drift into the shop, tentative, and then steadily growing more confident. At first, Wilbur surprised himself by how prickly he felt about such things, how uncomfortable, but then Nick murmured something to him, jerking his head in George’s direction, and they were suddenly much more preoccupied with keeping George’s hackles down to worry about their place in Dream’s thoughts. Though, it became pretty clear that they needn’t have worried, as Dream was mostly hopeless at making friends still (when Lani came around one day with a cake and a smile, Dream tried to pay her before George could shove him quickly to the side and laugh, saying, “Sorry, we’re still training him,”) and seemed anyway happy with the way things were.

Wilbur couldn’t help but be glad, jealousy aside, by the way, Dream worked his quiet influence on the town, even though he sucked at actually talking to people. The shop soon became a regular visiting point of many, if not ever exactly busy, and Dream made things better in small, cheerful ways that made Nick smile his great smile, the one that lit up his whole face, and that made George reach out slowly, learning to talk to the people their age, if not the rest of the town.

Phil began to drop in with books he thought Dream might like, after spending an hour one day talking intently about Hemingway and J.D. Salinger with Dream (“Trust him to be up to date on _that_ particular aspect of modern culture,” Nick said dryly), and Lani – despite all Dream’s quirks – took a great and cheekily delighted liking to him, dropping by frequently with little Tubbo smiling enigmatically at her elbow.

Dream seemed, more than anything, a little bewildered by all the attention, but after a while, he began to warm to them, and on Lani's birthday she woke up to a bluebird on her window singing cheerfully, a tiny package at its feet. She wore the brooch it contained (a brilliant blue feather attached to a pin) with nearly everything she owned. Afterward, people began to notice that Lani was often there At The Right Place, At The Right Time; when Tommy was about to tip over a wedding cake, or at the exact moment to snap up the last jar of raspberry preserve on sale.

Schlatt, Wilbur's coworker, came in one Saturday afternoon in the last days of August, ducking his head where the ceiling sloped and perching on one of the stools, smiling at the three of them and draping himself easily across the counter. “Seeing as you three seem to have stolen Wilbur from me,” he said, narrowing his eyes and grinning at the same time, “I figure I’ll just have to come here if I ever want to talk to him,” but he spent as much time giggling with Nick and singing old one-hit wonders with George as he did talking to Wilbur.

Dream always seemed a little distracted around Schlatt, Wilbur thought, but when he asked, Dream shook his head and just said, quietly, “He reminds me of someone I knew, once.” After a week of Schlatt stopping in, Dream gave him a small amulet on a leather strap, and said, “I think you might need this,” before disappearing.

Schlatt headed back up to the city after that for university, and Wilbur waited with some small amount of dread and sadness for the inevitable phone call in which Schlatt sounded tired and dispirited about his latest relationship. The thing with Schlatt, Wilbur thought, wasn’t so much that he fell for the wrong girls, as it was that the wrong girls fell for _him_.

When Schlatt did call, though, he sounded more puzzled than anything else. “No one’s hit on me for _ages_ ,” he said, laughing, although there was a little bit of annoyance underneath it. It was probably the longest period Schlatt had gone without a date, Wilbur thought, and he wasn’t entirely sure that it was a bad thing – especially when Schlatt called a few days later and talked in a hushed and cautiously, brilliantly happy tone about finally being approached by This Girl, You Should Meet Her, I Can’t Even—.

“Her name’s Minx, apparently,” Wilbur finished the next day, telling the story to the guys in the shop (Nick having been kept up with all of Schlatt's bad luck over the year, and George and Dream recently filled in). Nick raised his eyebrows in a way that indicated he was vaguely interested, George warbled something about true love waiting, and Dream smiled.

Darryl brought his good friend around, a short, somewhat defiant looking teenager called Alex, and told Dream, “He gets sick a lot. Can you do anything to help?”

More than anyone else in the town, Darryl seemed to have caught on without being told that there was something more than met the eye to Dream – probably the music box and the restless paintings were fair clues, Wilbur thought. Dream looked sorry when Darryl asked, though, and explained haltingly that he wasn’t a doctor, and that there were certain things he couldn’t – “I mean, you shouldn’t mess with nature,” he said, quietly, and Alex and Darryl looked very understanding and also very disappointed.

Across the room, George started sending Dream crestfallen looks, and after a few moments of pointedly ignoring them—

(Nick nudged Wilbur, whispered, “I give him five minutes before he caves.”

“Oh man, you underestimate the power of George’s pout,” Wilbur told him quietly. “It’ll be one minute, tops.”)

—he finally sighed and bent beneath the counter, producing a ball of dark, warm looking wool, and handed it to Alex. “Knit a scarf or something out of it,” he said. “That should help.”

Alex, with the help of his grandma, made a knit beanie, and soon he was rarely seen without them, especially when autumn set in. Sure enough, he got sick less frequently than before, but when Wilbur asked what was in the wool, Dream just grinned.

“Nothing,” he said. “But they remind Alex to dress warmly before he goes out in the cold.”

(Despite this, whenever Alex did get sick, Dream tended to disappear for a half hour or so, and Alex told stories about the most amazing dreams he had, of weird and otherworldly visitors who came and kept him company when he was coughing in the middle of the night.)

For all the sudden increase of magic in the town, Wilbur’s favorite moments were the silly ones, the quiet ones; where he looked up and caught George’s eye and got a real George smile, a big one, the ones that made Wilbur so angry and so sorry that he’d never seen George before. Mostly, though, he felt like he could deal without the magic as long as he had _them_ , like on the day Nick decided to take a broom to the cobwebs and Dream flew at him in a white-faced rage and spent the rest of the day murmuring comforting nonsense to the spiders, and George laughed and laughed.

Dream was standing at the window when Nick came in, letting the first cold September wind in with him. Nick paused and stood for a moment in the doorway, the chimes mercifully silent; Dream looked very far away, eyes fixed on something outside the window that Nick was abruptly certain he couldn’t see.

He closed the door hesitantly and crossed to Dream, stepping lightly across the floor. “You all right?” he asked. He looked around for George, even for other customers, but they were alone in the room, and Nick wasn’t even entirely sure that Dream was fully there.

“Autumn’s here,” Dream said, quietly. He touched the windowpane just gently; on the road, a flurry of leaves was scuffling along the gutter.

“Yeah,” Nick agreed, slowly. He reached out and put a hand on Dream’s back, between his shoulder blades. Dream felt very cold, even through his shirt.

“I always think,” Dream murmured, “That at least with winter you know where you stand.”

“I guess,” Nick said, even though he didn’t understand. He stood very still instead, and after a moment Dream sighed and leaned back into him. When he turned around, finally, Nick stood awkwardly for a moment before Dream moved in and Nick hugged him, holding Dream as close and well as he could.

George came in then, laughing with his arms full of groceries, carrying dead leaves on the soles of his shoes. Dream looked up and smiled, and for a fleeting moment, Nick felt as if Dream was far, far, away.

Autumn changed things. Outside the shop, Nick watched as the tree spreading its shadow over the pavement changed color too quickly, the leaves touched as though by a static, pervasive fire, creeping up and curling over them, smoothing long, insidious fingers that couldn’t be escaped. One day he stood and lingered a little longer than usual, only to turn and see Dream standing at the glass, not even watching him, staring at nothing.

Dream’s distraction was, much as Nick hated to admit it, becoming more and more frequent. He seemed constantly exhausted, and Nick looked at the slight trembling of his hands, like he was under a lot of stress, and wasn’t sure what to do, how to fix things. In the end, he just asked uselessly again and again if Dream was all right, and Dream smiled dimly, said that he’d been having some trouble sleeping.

Nick couldn’t help but feel himself fade into the background, taking Wilbur with him, while Dream walked away from them all and left George standing on his own. All of a sudden they were isolated from each other, and Nick didn’t know how to fix it – instead, he stood helplessly and listened to George fight with Dream in the next room.

(“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Dream said. “I – what’s wrong, what are you so pissed about—”

“As if you don’t know,” George hissed. “As if you can’t see! Dream, what are you _doing_?”

“Please believe me,” Dream said, quiet and distant, “when I say I have no idea.”

Outside, the tree shivered and shook, branches whipping as if caught in a high wind.)

It was hard, too, not to sense something Nick wasn’t entirely sure he believed in. In a way, it was all too easy to ignore parlor tricks and explain them away, to laugh at Dream’s conjurings – it was harder to deceive himself in terms of the faint aura, the shadow of things at Dream’s back, the way magic seemed to gather around him. Sometimes Nick thought he could see wings; often he walked into a room to find Dream pressing his forehead against glass windows and murmuring strange, foreign words that _sounded_ like protection, like safety, only his voice was always faintly desperate.

On the last night of September, Nick stayed the night, with Wilbur up in town visiting Niki. When he got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water, he found Dream sitting in the kitchen, fingers tapping on the table, back straight and unmoving; not sleeping, not doing anything. Nick had the unaccountable feeling that Dream was waiting, and maybe protecting the household as best he could.

It was frightening and useful at the same time, realizing that only by understanding that sometimes Dream wished magic didn’t exist could he come to terms with it _himself_.

“I want mulled wine,” Dream said lazily. Nick thought that they probably spent more time lying about on the shop floor than was either cool or healthy, but when they closed up the shop, it was often the room with the most light and space (“I’m working on the lounge,” George told them, grimacing, “but seriously, you have not fucking _seen_ clutter like this before”).

“I don’t think I’ve ever had that,” George answered. Nick happened to know for a fact that George had barely had anything – no drinking for years when he was living with his family, and when he’d finally moved out he hadn’t been able to afford any added rebellion.

“I had it once,” Wilbur said. “At Halloween.”

“There’s red wine somewhere,” George said, flapping a hand, and Nick got up and brought it back before George started wondering exactly how hard it would be for them to make mulled wine on their own (Nick didn’t trust any of them, and especially not George’s random and slightly insane urges to do whatever would make Dream happy). It turned out that there were three bottles of red wine, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nick brought them all, and wine glasses. It was Saturday night, anyway, and they all had tomorrow off.

It didn’t take long before they were all sprawled around properly on the floor. _Fucking lightweights_ , Nick thought, a little blearily, but it was kind of nice, too, Dream humming and exhaling misty breaths that turned into butterflies, or ships, or horses, like something out of Tolkien. George had his head in Wilbur’s lap and had somehow procured some bubble mixture, was blowing shining heaps of them at the smoky forms to see how they reacted to detergent intruders on their airspace (so far, the answer seemed to be: violently).

It might have been an ordinary night, Nick thought, but Dream looked distant again, and Nick had a feeling that George was less drunk than he was pretending. He was slumped on the ground and humming idly to himself, but his eyes were sharp. It was Wilbur, though, who finally dragged the subject away from a cheerful and enthusiastic debate about the merits of The Beatles vs. The Beach Boys.

“Alex is sick again, did you know?” he said. “Poor kid.”

George made a face. “You’re gonna sit up all night all over again now, huh?” His tone was teasing, but Dream looked a little guilty and there was some small annoyance in George’s voice when he sighed, “Jesus, Dream.”

“I don’t get it, really,” Wilbur said, sleepily. “Can’t you just _fix_ him?”

“Um,” Dream said. He stretched for a moment, cross-legged with his hands pushing up towards the ceiling, and then he reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “I – not really, no.” He was quiet as if waiting for objections, but when nothing came he continued, haltingly, “The problem with so many magicians is – well, first off, the land is Faerie, but not everyone _is_ a – a fairy, I guess, in your sense of the word. There are too many different things, different species, and cultures and even, you know, individuals, only one of them in all of Faerie. There are even ordinary humans, although we have a much longer lifespan than you, and then out of _them_ come magicians. There’s. There’s not that many of us.”

George sat up, eyes dark but interested, and Nick leaned in a little closer, despite himself. Dream _never_ talked about these things. He looked slightly unhappy to be doing so now, his head hung down facing the wooden floorboards, darting up on occasion to check that they were still listening, but his voice was low and steady and, after a little while, grew stronger.

“So the problem with magicians,” Dream told them, and Nick was very, very glad that he had had enough to drink that he could hear this without feeling all out of sorts about magic again, “is that, um, quite a few tend to go bad. And it’s not out of having some evil deep down in you like in books, it’s not a definite beginning or flaw, arrogance or hubris, or something. It generally starts when you try to use magic as a means to an end. Magic to get more power, more money, more – more love. It’s easy, of course, it’s easier even than you would think. But magic isn’t meant to be used.”

He waved his hand idly, and the candles glowed a little brighter. Nick glanced around quickly at the others; Wilbur’s face was smooth and intent, eyes curious – George just looked frightened.

“Magic just is,” Dream said, very softly. “You can’t mess with that too much, or it has a way of turning you bad. It gets warped. And wrong. It makes everything wrong.” He drew in a shuddering breath and then attempted a smile. “Magic works best with people who are light of heart, who don’t depend on it but can be helped by it all the same. Tiny little things. So. That’s why I can’t fix Alex.”

They were quiet for a while; then Wilbur ventured, “Do you ever miss… you know. Home?”

Nick pushed his hair back behind his ear, uneasy, and George looked furious, but Dream seemed to relax a bit, leaning back on his elbows and smiling crookedly. “Not really,” he said.

“Didn’t you have friends and things?” Wilbur asked. “Family?”

Dream bit his lip. “No,” he said, “Or at least not in a way that you would understand,” and they fell silent. After a moment, Dream added, “It’s really… you have no idea how confusing a place it can be. Cherry Hill makes so much more _sense_.”

“Yeah,” George said, bitterly. “This place is full of sense. The most fucking boring place in the—”

“No, really,” Dream said, sounding frustrated. “You have to like – in Faerie, you always have to be watching and waiting and on guard, and it’s so hard to have real friends. Or it was for me, anyway. Here it’s just – it’s difficult sometimes, I have to watch and not… not meddle too much in the affairs of the town, not make everything too easy for people, because it’s insanely easy, I can’t explain to you properly how easy it is, you honestly couldn’t begin to understand – but it’s still not the same as it is there.”

“You sugarcoat everything,” George told him coldly, standing up and ignoring the faintly hurt crease between Dream’s eyes. “You’re so – whatever, Dream, seriously. I’m going to go piss.”

He stalked off, and Dream’s mouth twisted unhappily. “He doesn’t believe me,” he said. Nick thought it wasn’t as simple as that; knew that George didn’t _not_ believe Dream, he just didn’t believe that Dream could be _here_.

“He wants to, though,” Wilbur said, sleepy and simple. “So there’s that in your favor.”

“Yeah.” Dream laughed, quiet, and mirthless. “All I’m saying is that this is better than Faerie., And not just because it has you guys. I’m not trying to pretend that it’s some kind of – of course, it’s hard, and there are boundaries _everywhere_. I’m – I’m constantly afraid about screwing up.” His voice was full of ancient, tired guilt. “I’ve done it before.”

Something cold twisted in Nick’s gut, but in the end, he didn’t do anything besides moving up and scuffing his hand through Dream’s hair, smiling down at him when Dream pushed back into the touch. Nick twisted around until he was half leaning on Dream, their heads resting together, and kept his mouth closed. He could have said, George would be the saddest guy in the world by now if it wasn’t for you and nobody would know that he could sing; he could have said, my life was so _boring_ ; he could have said, everybody in this village is happier and they don’t even know why.

Instead, he just propped his head on one hand and said, “You’re doing good.” Dream looked up and met his eyes, surprised, and then smiled slowly, and Nick added, “For a fraud.”

Dream started to laugh. Nick grinned, cheered up, and then looked away just in time to see George standing in the doorway, hidden in shadows.

They ended up staying the night, even though George had only come back for a little while before he disappeared again, and that had pretty much killed any remainder of a cheery mood. Dream headed for bed earlier than usual, and Nick was so surprised and (secretly) pleased that Dream was going to bed at all that he forgot to feel weird about being left alone in a shop he didn’t own.

“We crashing on couches?” Wilbur asked with a yawn at around one, and Nick nodded and stood up, dragging Wilbur up with a hand. Wilbur shuffled close and put his arm around Nick’s waist, and Nick grinned – Wilbur was the most affectionate drunk he knew, and with the tension, George had left in the room, he appreciated it more than usual.

“Hey,” Wilbur murmured as if picking up on his thoughts. “You think they’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Nick said because he did. Autumn was maybe strange, after that bright summer, new friends for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the sun thawing Nick’s frozen life. He said, “We’ll make sure they are.”

Wilbur grinned. “Yeah,” he said, and they wandered off to find suitable sofas and blankets to crash on.

(On his way, Nick noticed an ajar door and soft voices, and lingered outside it for a moment, peering through the crack. Dream was stretched out on the bed beside George, hand-stretched up and pointing to the stars on George’s ceiling, murmuring about constellations and the mythologies of a foreign sky.

 _I wonder_ , Nick thought suddenly, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, went to bed.)

Even with a sort of steady, fierce determination that they were going to be fine, autumn was bad. George looked progressively smaller and unhappier, shoulders hunching in on himself. He and Dream took to dropping by Nick and Wilbur’s nearly as often as they all hung out at the shop, though Dream generally looked confused and unsure when they did so.

One night, Nick cornered George and George just shook his head, looking impossibly weary. “I don’t get it,” he said. “It’s too big. I don’t think I can ever get it.”

“George, seriously,” Nick said, almost desperately. “What are you scared about? Dream’s on fucking edge the whole time and the more miserable you get the more he does, and then it’s just like, oh, here come the Mopey Twins—”

“I can feel him going somewhere,” George spat out, sudden and fierce. “I can – he goes off, out the back door, only he doesn’t appear in the little garden behind the house, you know? He’s just gone. And then he comes back late – you don’t have to laugh at me, I, I know how ridiculous I sound, I can’t even.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like he’s living in two different worlds at the same time.”

“George,” Nick said uncertainly. “George, you know it isn’t true—”

“God, don’t be such an ass,” George said, eyes dark and chin jutting up, and Nick was reminded once again why so many people in the town had the impression that George thought he was too good for them. “You can keep pretending as long as you like, we’re all used to it, but don’t when I’m telling you that – Jesus, Nick, some days he doesn’t have a shadow, or he’ll walk around but his feet don’t make any noise. And I don’t want him to leave.”

“He’s not _going to_ ,” Nick said. “George, he’s not going to.”

“It’s stupid,” George said. “To get attached, it was so stupid. I’m so stupid.”

“George,” Nick said, helpless, and George shook his head, edged his way inside. Dream and Wilbur looked up from the counter, and Dream's head hung low and he kept quiet, and Nick thought it was both of their fault, both of them too stubborn and silent and frightened. George leaned easily against the counter and smiled, and Nick watched as Dream edged closer, pressing up against George’s side.

George didn’t move, and Nick wondered about footsteps ringing out with no one nearby somewhere in Faerie, or Dream’s shadow wandering dark and lonely on green hills.

It was cold, halfway through October, when Nick opened his door on Friday morning and nearly tripped over George.

“Fuck,” he said, Wilbur appearing like magic (some part of his brain laughed tiredly) at his shoulder. “You all right?”

George looked up, pale with dark shadows under his eyes, face blank. “He’s gone,” he said. “For good, this time, I’m pretty sure.”

Nick’s knees were suddenly a little wobblier than usual. He sat down heavily next to George. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” George said. Wilbur made a strange noise behind him. “It’s been two nights. And he was weird before he left. He was all – he looked really worried, and I think I heard him talking to somebody, late the other night. And half of the books in the library have disappeared with him, and one of his guitars.” He rubbed his knuckles against closed eyes, laughed tiredly. “I know, ‘cos I just finished sorting out all the stuff, finally. And now his favorite guitar’s gone.”

“George,” Nick said. He thought about magic, how it had become easy to accept if he just didn’t say it out loud, and how now he thought he would say that he believed in it a hundred times if he thought it had a chance of fixing George. He thought about how frightening it was that this didn’t feel entirely like a surprise; that he felt instead as if the threat of a storm lingering overhead had finally broken. He almost tilted his face up, searching for rain.

“He might come back,” Wilbur said. “He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he—”

“Maybe he meant to,” George said, “And forgot.” Nick sucked in a harsh breath.

“I think you’re wrong,” Wilbur insisted, voice a little strained. “I think you’re – look, let’s just go back to the shop, all three of us, and we’ll just, we’ll wait.”

George looked at him, eyes dull. “If you want,” he said, and Nick wanted to hug him, but wasn’t sure if maybe a touch wouldn’t break George right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, look at me actually progressing the storyline! Anywho, I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and if you enjoyed reading it consider leaving a kudos and/or a bookmark, it'd mean the world to me! Feel free to leave any suggestions, commentary, and critques in the comments, I'd love to hear all of it (reminder this is my first fic so don't be shy)! Also, no one asked but I've kinda written all of their ages funky and not true to their irl ages so I'd like to list everyone's ages so far in the story:
> 
> Dream: ??? (canon unknown, so far at least)  
> George: 20  
> Nick: 19  
> Wilbur: 21  
> Niki: 19  
> Phil: 40 (sorry lmao I just kinda wanted to increase dad vibes)  
> Darryl: 22  
> Zak:21  
> Alex:18  
> Tommy: 8  
> Tubbo: 6  
> Lani: 26 (LMAO, okay, I just thought it'd be cute if Lani could have her own bakery in this AU cuz of the Tubbo baking stream, and y'know a child can't own a bakery so I was like, fuck it, double her age.)  
> Minx: 24  
> Schlatt: 21


	5. Nowhere to be Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I hope y'all are loving the series, thank you so much for the 50 kudos (and the 4 bookmarks, they make me very happy to see people are following the story hehe)! This chapter is another big one totaling around 8,000 words like the last one haha. Sadly though chapter production is going to be slowed a bit due to school, I hope you don't mind too much. Anywho, I hope y'all enjoy this chap, it's a goodie!

They kept the sign on the door flipped to _Closed_ and ignored it when people peered in through the grimy windows at them, looking curious. George slumped in an armchair, the blanket with something about mermaids written on its label wrapped around his shoulders (“It’s cold,” he said, quietly). Wilbur twisted his way across the floorboards and back again, and Nick watched them both helplessly, mind racing, trying to come up with yet another explanation, a reason.

“How long has it been again?” he asked.

“Today’s the third day,” George mumbled.

“Maybe he’s just lost track of time,” Wilbur told them, words tumbling out hasty and blurring over one another. “He’s so – he sucks at that stuff sometimes, you know he does, maybe he’s just forgotten what day it is again.”

“Maybe,” George agreed. He shut his eyes, looking impossibly tired. Nick wondered whether he had slept at all last night.

“Jesus,” he snapped. He had gone slowly from confusion to disbelief on the way over. Wilbur looked at him now and Nick could tell from his face that there was dark fury lingering in his eyes. “I could fucking _kill_ him.”

George made a small sound that was almost an agreement. Nick glared at him.

“I’m _serious_!”

“What did you think was going to happen?” George asked with an awful laugh. “The magic dude from _Faerie_ was going to stick around forever? For fuck’s sake.”

“I don’t think Dream would do it,” Nick said. “He wouldn’t just take off – he was our _friend_.”

George shrugged. “Friends come and go.”

“Shut up,” Nick said fiercely. “Shut the fuck up. He _loves_ you.”

George flinched and Wilbur came and sat on the arm of the chair, slung an arm around his shoulders. “It’ll be alright,” he said. “He’ll come back. It’ll be alright.”

Dream didn’t come back.

What did happen was that Wilbur was woken up three days later at two in the morning by George shaking him awake, face bright and alive and furious all at once, and clutching a few crumpled pages in his hand.

“What is it?” he asked muzzily, sitting up.

“News,” George told him, voice a little rough. “Come on, let’s go wake up Nick.”

This done with as little bodily injury as possible, the three of them sat around the kitchen table with coffee peering at the letter.

“Well,” Wilbur said, eventually, hating the silence more than the twisting, ugly feeling in his stomach. “What’s this about?”

“It’s a legal document,” Nick answered, voice blank. “He’s given us the shop.”

“It’s not just a legal document,” George countered, voice hard. “It’s a _will_.”

Nick put his hands over his head and stretched, knuckles cracking audibly. “We don’t know that,” he said. “It doesn’t mention—”

“It’s as good as a will,” George told him, “and you know it.” He reached and flipped it over again, so that they could all read the note on the back for the umpteenth time.

I’m sorry, Dream had written, in his tall, spiky scrawl. _I love you all. I’ll miss you. Take care of each other please_.

Wilbur felt something cold and awful twisting at his gut; he curved his hands around his elbows, he missed the summer. He looked at their faces: George pale but somehow cheered, a certain determination settling around him; Nick with his arms crossed, face unreadable. “Well,” Wilbur said, steady as he could make it. “What are we going to do?”

“Go after him,” George said promptly. “No duh.”

Wilbur shifted from foot to foot, sneaking another glance at Nick’s blank face. “Into _Faerie_?”

George bit his lip and looked a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, more than a little scared, but after a moment he nodded once, firmly. Automatically, Wilbur turned with George to look at Nick.

Nick shrugged easily. “No duh,” he echoed, and George smiled.

The trouble with Faerie, George thought, was that it didn’t exactly have a roadmap for how to get there. Or if it did (and here George lost his train of thought for a moment, grinning at the idea of directions to pixie gas stations and all-night diners where you could eat, George didn’t know, a sandwich with Faerie dust in it or something), Dream didn’t possess a copy.

George knew. Delegated to the ‘finding the way’ part of the mission (Wilbur was ‘supplies’, and Nick was apparently ‘Queen Bitch Overlord’ or something), he felt like he’d flipped his way through every book Dream owned in the last few days, disturbing human fiction included, and Dream owned a _lot_ of books.

It wasn’t like it wasn’t even mentioned, either. There were thousands of cheerfully annoying little references to getting in and out of Faerie or to where the books called, a little disconcertingly, The Smoky Earth, and all of them were ridiculously unhelpful. Most of them made comments about doors and walking _through_ doors and _finding_ doors ( _one in every magician’s home!_ a book said, but it was lying because George had walked through every door in the house and so far the only thing that had happened was a can of tomatoes had rolled out of nowhere from a shelf in Dream’s otherwise empty kitchen cupboards, and fallen on George’s head).

Of course, _any youth knows the rudimentary magic and skill needed to find and create doors to other realms_ , the book George was reading now said in an unfairly condescending tone, and George hefted it up and hurled it across the room.

“Fuck you,” he snapped at where it was lying, face down with the pages creased beneath it. He thought of what Dream’s reproachful expression would be if he saw it, and swallowed hard. “And fuck you, too,” he said, quietly.

He felt, to be honest, a little stupid. He’d been aware, of course, of how serious it was, had seen Dream withdraw, but he’d never really thought that it was unwilling. _Selfish_ , he thought, and dug his fingernails into his palms, thought of the strange occurrences: the mysterious voices in the back room late at night; the ravens that had tapped on the windows carrying letters in their beaks; the time Dream had read something that turned him pale white, and George had felt something a little like a shockwave, enough to make him look down and see his coffee turned to dust in the cup.

The door to the library opened and Nick came in, crossing the floor to him with a sympathetic grin. “Still no luck?” he asked, and he sounded just amused enough that George forgave him after a reluctant moment for all the bossiness of the past week.

“Nope,” he said, and stretched his arms above him with a yawn, knuckles cracking audibly. “Fuck, ‘m tired.”

“You alright?” Nick asked. “Want me to take a look at them instead for a while?”

“Nah. Just didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all,” George told him, and then regretted it and set his jaw, not wanting to say anymore. He was sleeping enough, he thought. Just not – comfortably. It was easier if he just didn’t think about what might be happening, or probably was happening, or even the stupid, gaping absences where George turned around and – anyway.

Nick didn’t go into it, thankfully, just nodded. “Hmm,” he said and drummed his fingers absently against the hilt of his sword.

It should be absurd, George thought, Nick with that massive old weapon strapped around his waist, absurd or at the very least hilarious, but George didn’t feel the urge to laugh or marvel in the slightest. It just looked weirdly right, the easy way Nick handled it, the way it tapped against his thigh sometimes as he walked.

They had found it two days ago, going through Dream’s bedroom a little guiltily for a hint of something, anything, but with no luck. Then Nick had half-crawled under the bed, and emerged a little bemused and clutching the sword. For the first few minutes that Nick had been holding it, George was pretty sure that it had been _humming_.

Wilbur had looked at him and said, lightly, mouth twitching, “I think it likes you, Nick.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nick had said, narrowing his eyes. “It’s just – electricity, or whatever. There’s probably something on in the house. Check the heater, George?”

But he had strapped it on around his waist regardless, and it had looked good, looked fine. Still looked fine. George tilted his head and thought about old stories, swords emerging when you needed them, ladies in lakes.

“Wilbur’s found some good stuff,” Nick said eventually, dragging George’s attention back to the present. “Weird, but like… good.”

“I know, he showed me this morning,” George answered. It was true and interesting. Wilbur kept stumbling across things, he told George, that seemed weirdly necessary to them, even if he didn’t think so at first: bottles of liquids labelled in Dream’s handwriting with things like _Can Help_ and _In Case of a Sudden Shock_ , and _Use as a Substitute for Prince Charming’s Kiss_. Wilbur had packed them all away carefully in his backpack that never quite seemed to run out of room, along with other things that cropped up out of nowhere: a rope that had a note pinned to it, _always the right length_ , and a thermos that didn’t ever quite seem to empty, and a blanket that wasn't particularly special, just nice and warm and bigger than it looked.

George fiddled with his hair absently, tucking a strand behind his ear. He didn’t know what to do with his hands anymore. “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling crookedly. “I’m kinda failing pretty hard at the whole helpful thing.”

Nick looked at him, eyes dark and serious. “You’re not,” he told him. “It’s just hard. We’ll find a way.”

“Maybe you guys have to be the heroes,” George said, voice light, even though his throat felt a little hard. “With your sword and your supplies and shit. I’ve got nothing.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Nick said. “As if Dream would ever forgive us if we showed up without you. As if we could even find him.” George shrugged, and Nick looked at him, thoughtful. “Hey,” he said. “You’ve been singing a lot, you know?”

“Yeah?” George blinked. “I hadn’t noticed. Old habits, I guess.”

Nick just regarded him for a moment and then nodded and shrugged. “Keep looking,” he said, and then paused, looking a little embarrassed, before adding sheepishly, “And hey, if nothing else… tomorrow’s Halloween. You never know.”

“Oh,” George said, surprised. He hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, okay.”

Nick nodded and left, and George went and retrieved his book, found his place in it. He had a song stuck in his head and after a while, he stopped humming and sang.

And, despite the constant, tired sense of unease and fear in his stomach, blurring his head, making his eyes sore, his voice was full and strong.

The next morning dawned cold and clear, blue mist dissipating by the time George got up, earlier than usual. Wilbur and Nick sat in the kitchen hunched over cups of coffee, dark shadows under their eyes, and George thought he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been sleeping.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked, and Nick shook his head, tiredly.

“We’ve been through every door in the house again,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” George said, and busied himself at the counter, fixing hot coffee with lots of sugar. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, George thought. It was only nine o’clock in the morning.

They didn’t move as much as usual, that day. George thought that maybe he should be searching through the books again, but a tense, still air had settled on him, on all of them. They sat around the back lounge room, Wilbur and George half-holding guitars, Nick tapping an idle, too fast beat on his denim-clad legs.

George felt a little bit like it should have happened at midday, or at the exact moment when the sun sliced through the clouds, a single ray of gold guiding their way, but instead, Wilbur just looked up suddenly, eyes curious, and then sharp.

“Hey,” he said and nodded to the window. The trees had crowded around it, tapping at the glass with long, slightly sinister-looking branches, leaves hanging off them silver-green-grey, despite the autumn. George and Nick looked up and followed his gaze, and suddenly George’s heart was pounding. _Finally_ , he thought, _oh, thank fuck._

Nick swallowed hard. “Was that forest always there?” he asked aloud, slowly, wondering, and Wilbur started to smile.

They stood up and went and fetched the backpacks that were waiting in the kitchen, packed with as many things they could think of, and still light. George hefted it on his shoulders and took a breath.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Nick said quickly.

George turned, could feel a needlessly cruel snarl forming in his throat, on his lips – he didn’t want to wait, it had been a week and a half, he needed them, and George needed him, they had to _go_ —

“Um,” Nick said, “I think we should grab some jackets, dude.”

Jackets and coats hastily grabbed, they look at each other, strangely solemn, and then Wilbur opened the backdoor. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s go get Dream,” and George took a breath of clean, strange, biting cold air and then stepped out into it.

The clandestine path was tucked between towering redwoods, small patches of vibrant mushrooms and tufts of grass grew along its sides. It was a sandy trail, narrow and winding, speckled with pebbles and twinkling stones, the path seemed to be infinitely long. George swallowed hard and looked at either side of him; Wilbur’s eyes were huge and a little frightened, but he made an effort and grinned when he saw George looking, and Nick just looked suddenly, brilliantly calm, face impassive as they went on through the woods. The trees seemed to crowd around them, behind them, and George determinedly didn’t look back. There was no point in doing that. Not yet.

Wilbur looked back, though, giggling nervously over his shoulder. “Uh, guys?” he said. “I’m starting to think we didn’t really… think this through properly.”

“Nothing to think through,” George said, firmly, but Nick made a face.

,” he corrected. “Which yeah, obviously, but like.” He looked around the daunting woods and bit his lip. “We don’t know what to _do_ , here.”

George grinned and then spontaneously cart-wheeled along the narrow path.

“That’s the easiest part,” he remarked when he was upright again. “We’ll just follow the fairytales.”

Easier said than done, in so many ways, Wilbur thought. Faerie was a strange, eerie landscape, colder than Cherry Hill had been, and the path through the trees was often dark, often hard underfoot. The first night they stopped, they all huddled under the magic blanket, cold and frightened while a storm boomed too close overhead. They told each other stupid, pointless stories and jokes to keep their minds off the strange noises that weren’t part of the storm coming from outside the little clearing they were huddled in, the unaccountable feeling Wilbur had of being watched.

The next morning, the woods were full of a mist, twisting through the trees and making it hard to keep on the path, especially as it took sharp, unexpected turns, and it was only through Nick’s sharp eyes that they were able to keep an eye on it. Once, they saw a series of flickering, golden lights leading off through the fog, and Nick was about to set off for them before George and Wilbur both reached and grabbed for him.

“Are you _mental_?” George asked harshly, and Wilbur swallowed down the panic in his chest.

“Come on, Nick,” he said. “Your mom _told_ us the stories. Don’t trust lights if they come out of nowhere.”

“Are you – you think they’re, what, _were_ -lights or something?” Nick asked, sounding incredulous, and Wilbur said nothing, only shrugged helplessly. After a moment, Nick sighed and they went on trying to navigate the tricky turns and unexpected corners in the path. The ground was stony and unforgiving, too, and by the end of the second day his soles were aching, his eyes sore from straining through the fog.

They lay under the blanket again, and George sang softly, old, sad songs that were comforting all the same ( _oh my darling, oh my darling, Oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine_ ). After a little while, he started to sound exhausted, voice weak, and Nick said, “Hey, it’s alright, just, just sleep.”

“I keep hearing things,” George said tiredly. “Voices and other songs and – I hate it, I hate this place.”

“This could be the last night in the woods,” Nick said. “They can’t last forever, and I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to find Dream in here. Let’s just hang out in a city, okay? That’s our best bet.”

“Yeah,” George said, and Wilbur drifted off to sleep to the sound of George’s ragged, frantic humming, and the lingering unease of higher voices beyond that, just out of reach, in a counter-melody, a different, darker song.

By the end of the next day, Nick was right and they had reached the end of the woods, but any relief that they felt over that dissipated quickly. They climbed up over hills that were steep and tiring, pebbles getting caught mysteriously in their shoes, and by the end of the day he had a huge, painful blister, not used to wearing sneakers, and none of them had thought to bring bandaids. Wilbur was tired and grumpy and wanted to snap at George or Nick for it, but of course, _he_ had been the one in charge of packing, so he didn’t say anything, only went to sleep early, back turned to them.

In the morning, he felt kind of bad for his rudeness, but Nick said, “Don’t worry about it,” when he tried to apologize, and George just grinned and clapped his shoulder, and they continued.

It was George who was in the best mood – worried like all of them were, but at least fiercely determined that they were _getting_ somewhere, going somewhere, that Dream was an achievable goal. It was George too who skipped ahead and came back one day with news that he could see a small village ahead, just down the hill, and that probably they could reach it by tomorrow.

They did, earlier than expected, too, but the village was desolate, doors locked and bolted, and when they peered in the windows they couldn’t see anyone. Once, a small figure stood up in a field and peered curiously at them, the size of a child, but when they ran towards it, calling out desperately for help or at least some form of information, it let out a terrifying shriek and turned and ran, darting out of sight before any of them could catch up.

Nick and George looked exhausted and dispirited. Wilbur took a breath and straightened his shoulders. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s just keep going,” and a little way past the village they found what looked like the main road, so there was that, at least.

They began covering less ground every day, too easily worn out, and Wilbur was acutely aware that their food supplies were running low, down to slightly stale loaves of bread and cheese that he sliced increasingly thinner pieces of. George raised his eyebrows and said, “I feel like a pilgrim or some shit,” and then, “My mom would be so proud,” clutching his hands beneath his chin and fluttering his eyelashes, and that made Wilbur feel a little better about lunch on one day, at least.

Most of the time, though, he began to become increasingly convinced that this had been something they were unprepared for. Already a week had passed since they had left Cherry Hill, and they were filthy and exhausted, unused to the constant traveling, to sleeping on the hard ground every night. Nick began to look more drawn and worried, and one night he waited until George was asleep before confiding, “I keep thinking we’re on a really short schedule, you know. I mean… it was like a will, that letter. It was. I think Dream might be in danger, I think there’s something wrong.”

“We’ll get there,” Wilbur assured, repeating the constant mantra in his head. “We’ll find him, we will, and when we do we’ll bring him back, and he’ll be fine.”

“Maybe,” Nick said, unhappily. “I just think we need to hurry _up_. We – we need to find a city. Soon.”

It was two days after that that they came to the crossroads. There were two signs inscribed with an incomprehensible script, and then one that said to _The Sea_ and another that said to _The Green_.

The three of them exchanged looks. “Well,” Wilbur said. “The Sea is pretty clear. The Green could be anything, though.”

“Including a city,” George said, hopeful.

“I don’t know,” Nick replied, slow and doubtful. “Isn’t it more likely that the ones written in some different language are the ones pointing the way to the cities?”

“Not necessarily,” Wilbur said. “Dream told me once that Faerie and human languages kind of tended to echo each other in some ways so that the most common language is going to be the same. And he said that they speak English here – like, a higher form of English, or something, but still _English_.”

“So,” George said, determined. “We go to The Green?”

“It’s a weird name,” Nick said, still sounding indecisive.

“Let’s just go down the road for a while,” Wilbur told him. “A couple of days. Worse comes to worst, we double back and try another one.”

Nick hesitated for a moment longer and then finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “The Green. Okay, let’s go.”

In the end, it took less than a day before George was grinning triumphantly and Nick looked cheered again because the green fields were giving way to scattered houses, and a little way ahead they could see buildings rising out of nowhere, an unmistakable town, a city. The road seemed to speed up, too, and it wasn’t that long before they were standing on the outskirts, the sandy path giving way to cobblestone road. From the moment, too, that they stepped onto that first street it seemed that they were swept up in the city, pushed along, taking a too short time to get into what felt like the center of the city, surrounded by people of all different kinds, and animals, and the unmistakable bustle of a marketplace.

“This is – _fuck_ ,” George said, staring around, eyes huge, and Wilbur knew what he meant. The city was like nothing he had ever seen or even dreamed of before, mad and sprawling and _alive_. Wilbur felt like there was a consciousness in every stone, and he itched for a camera even as he knew that there was no way he would be able to capture this, make it understood.

“There must be someone here who’s heard of Dream,” Nick said, grinning, and George laughed out loud for no real reason, but Wilbur understood anyway, the need to make this something amazing and thus, in a way, worthy of amusement, just so that it didn’t completely overwhelm, so it didn’t eat them alive.

“We should find a hotel or something like it,” Wilbur said. “I bet they don’t call them that. What is it? Like, a tavern.”

“A _pub_ ,” George declared, grinning, and Nick said, fervently,

“Oh, God, I could do with a drink.”

“And a bath,” Wilbur added. “I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be clean.”

“I reek,” George agreed, “But I want a drink, first.”

“Well, duh,” Wilbur said.

The best bit, he decided as they set off looking for one, was how they didn’t even really look that out of place; how there were grimy travelers everywhere, grim-faced and exhausted looking. Actually, there were a lot of people looking unhappy or frightened or just blank, he began to notice, uneasily, and maybe another reason why they were able to pass relatively unnoticed was that nobody looked each other in the face; everyone had their eyes averted, hurrying through the crowds with their gaze fixed on the ground.

“Hey,” Wilbur said and nudged Nick.

“I know,” Nick told him, looking wary. “We’ll just. Wait and see.”

Wilbur kind of thought that maybe just doing that might lead to them being in a bit of trouble, but he was acutely aware that a little bit of paranoia was probably not the best thing to live by, especially considering the amount of time they had spent alone, on the road, in a different _world_. He hooked his thumbs under his backpack and kept going, forcing the worry down by making himself notice other things, like couples strolling arm in arm or dirty-faced children darting in and out between people, or the sudden glimpse of what he thought might just have been a unicorn.

Then George whooped, loud and gleeful, and was leading them towards a tavern with a swinging sign that said _Prime Pub_ and a window that looked into a packed room and a bar. Wilbur found it even easier to ignore misgivings when there was the prospect of sitting down and some alcohol.

Look, we’ll just ask,” George said. He looked too triumphant, too proud, having guided them so far, taken them along, and Nick felt creeping unease up his spine, a sudden, pressing need to say _no, let’s just go, let’s get away from here_ , even though he knew that they were so close, that this was where they needed to be.

In any case, he didn’t think George would listen to him, and Wilbur looked enthusiastic, smiling, so Nick just shrugged and George beamed. He turned to the guy keeping the bar, his hair was fluffy and some white strands spilled over his reddish hair, and two ears that resembled a fox's laid atop his unruly tufts. Nick noted with amusement that he didn’t even look at such things as out of the ordinary anymore, just took them in. He almost wished that he could wonder more at it, still – frightened as he was, sick to the stomach with it, he never wanted to forget this.

George leaned over the bar, smiled widely. “Hey,” he said, “We were wondering if you could help – we’re trying to track down a friend of ours.”

“Sure,” the fox-like stranger replied in an unfamiliar, yet oddly soothing accent. He leaned forward on his elbows, eyes a shade of brown resembling smooth whiskey, face attentive, his thin lips curved into a playful smirk and George rapped his fingers along the counter, too fucking cocky, smiling, smiling.

“His name’s Dream,” George said. “He’s a magician – super tall, he wears a big ass cloak and a weird mask, kinda buff almost looks like he could fight god—”

“I’m sorry,” the bartender told them, looking sympathetic. “There’s nobody in The Green of that name.”

George’s face fell, but he took a breath, plowed on. “Maybe he uses a different one, here,” he said. “He was here a long time ago, he was – we’re pretty sure he was really powerful, maybe you knew him? If you could just try and remember?”

The bartender cocked his head to one side for a moment and then shook it. “Sorry,” he said.

“That’s alright,” George said, sinking back down onto his stool. “That’s alright, I just. Thanks anyway.”

“Any time,” the man said. “Are you three new around here?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur answered, and the barkeep smiled, it lit up his whole face; made him breathtaking.

“Welcome,” he said, and bowed a little, palms facing up. “If you would like, we offer lodging here—”

“Oh,” Nick said, breathing out. “That would be great. Thank you.”

“Go talk to that woman over there,” the fox-like man directed, pointing to a woman standing near the door, smiling and greeting people as they walked in, and Nick nodded and stood, dragging Wilbur and George up with him.

They were almost halfway across the crowded floor when a stranger grabbed Nick’s elbow, tugged him in close. “Hey,” he said, eyes a greyish blue and intent, fixed on his face. His voice was a bit shrill and urgent. “You can’t go there. If you go there, you’ll be killed.”

Nick put his hand on the hilt of his sword instinctively, eyes narrowing, but the dude tightened his grip on Nick's elbow and shook it a little. “Listen to me,” he demanded. “I don’t know how much you know, but asking after Dream was a stupid thing to do and you’ve got to leave with me, now, or you’ll be killed.”

George swallowed hard, and Wilbur looked unsure. “Why should we trust you?” Nick snapped.

“Because Dream does,” the man said, and Nick felt George’s little jolt by his side. Nick glared at him, and he glared back, added, “Dream. He has a weird mask. He tends to sneak into your bed in the middle of the night and cuddle up. And he told me that you three would probably take it into your heads to do something stupid. You have to _trust_ me.”

Nick looked up. At the bar, the fox-like bartender was watching him with a clear, beautiful gaze. He bit back a shudder. Suddenly, he didn’t think he trusted anyone in this whole goddamn world.

“I think we should just go,” he began, slowly, but George suddenly raised a shaking hand to stop him, and pointed. Around his wrist, the man was wearing a bracelet made out of plastic beads, some of which spelled out _georgie rocks_. Dream had made an identical bracelet with George, who had made a matching one that spelled out _dream sux_. They both had worn them every day since. Nick let out a breath. He didn’t think that made it better, made it normal, but he also didn’t think he made much of a choice.

“Well,” he said, and bit his lip. “Okay, then.”

The man led them out a back entrance, he grabbed Nick’s hand and walked swiftly out of an alley, Nick’s comrade struggling to keep up to the two. Finally, they were out in the cold night, and Nick took a deep breath, and stared at him.

“So,” Wilbur said, “What’s going on?”

He looked at them and shook his head. “Later,” he dismissed. “Come with me,” and then took off down the street, Nick in hand, hurrying through the empty alleyways lined with shabby red bricks. He kept a fast pace, and soon all three of them were out of breath trying to keep up with him, worry still gnawing at Nick’s stomach.

Eventually, though, they reached a metal stairwell that seemed to go up to nowhere, looking like it belonged more to their world than it did The Green, and he led them up it, their footsteps clanging out in the still night. At the top of the stairs was a small, warm house that Nick hadn’t been able to see from the bottom, only a few rooms, with velvety red curtains and rugs thrown around the place. It was tiny, more like an apartment than a house, but when he closed and locked the door and beckoned for them to sit on the carpet by the fireplace, Nick felt warm and safe suddenly, for the first time in a long while.

“There,” he said, and let out a breath. He looked suddenly nicer, warm, wicked light in his eyes, and Nick thought that maybe he had been frightened, too. “Okay, so. Who’s who?”

“Um,” Nick said, after a moment. “I’m Nick – this is Wilbur, and this is George.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” he said, he suddenly formed a goofy grin, and Nick blinked at him and decided not to ask why. “Good, then. I’m Karl. You’re very lucky that I was there tonight – I’m probably one of the last people left in The Green who wouldn’t report you for treason for speaking Dream’s name.”

George stared. “But – why? Surely he's not like Faerie's Voldemort? Dream never said anything about being in trouble—”

“Dream never said anything about Faerie at all,” Wilbur said quietly, and George stiffened and nodded once, jerkily.

“Dream wasn’t in trouble,” Karl told them, running his fingertips through his puffy chestnut hair. “It’s – you don’t know anything?”

Nick considered for a moment, looking at George’s unhappy face. It wasn’t the truth, but he thought that maybe Karl would understand, anyway, so he just shrugged and answered, “No.”

“Okay, then,” Karl said. He sighed and looked down, and then finally he straightened and crossed his legs, putting his hands palm-down on his knees. When he spoke again, his shrill voice grew low, rich with color and storytelling. “Very well, then. A long time ago, a magician named Dream finished his apprenticeship and came to The Green. He was young, and proud, rightfully so, because he was the most talented magician we had come across in centuries. Incredibly gifted, slightly pretentious, more than a little arrogant, and it would be putting it lightly to say that many people disliked him for these things. But he was good, still, and he never used his magic for evil ends.”

George opened his mouth like he was about to be affronted on Dream’s behalf, and Nick exchanged a quick look with Wilbur, who cuffed George quickly and lightly behind the ear. George slanted a betrayed look at him, but quietened, leaning a little against Nick’s shoulder as Karl continued.

“All magicians have the responsibility to pass down the knowledge of their magic,” he said, “and Dream was in high demand. He took only a few apprentices, ones who showed great promise, and taught them what he knew because he liked to have companions to talk with. He taught them all manner of spells and charms and words of power, but he forgot that he was young himself still, and blind in some ways, and he didn’t know or understand that he also needed to teach prudence and responsibility, the conservation and consideration of magic as well as its use. It was not a very great surprise when one apprentice, the most powerful of the lot, started thinking about magic for his own gain, and he turned away from Dream and attempted to conquer large parts of the country, killed many people.”

Nick took in a breath, wishing it wasn’t so easy to imagine. Karl waited for a moment, eyes kind, and when he finished his story, it was in a softer, less dramatic tone.

“Dream didn’t have a choice,” he lamented. “He tried, we all tried, to decide what could be done, but in the end, he only had one option. He banished his apprentice from Faerie, which is no small thing to do because to be forced away from Faerie is one of the most terrible things that can be done to us. Then he disappeared, and we never heard from him again.”

George raised his head, looking at her sharply. “Then what’s going on now?”

Karl rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand. “We didn’t hear from him,” he said. “We _sent_ for him. You may have noticed him coming back and forth between the two lands for a while? There were rumors that somehow this apprentice had returned, was ready to do evil again, had amassed even greater power, and Dream was trying to help us discover what was wrong.”

“And then what?” George’s face was very white.

Karl looked down, face was drawn, and pained. “The apprentice,” he said, quietly, “or not an apprentice anymore – in any case, he won. Dream didn’t have a word sent to him in time, and he returned to check on things only to find it too late. His last visit, he found upon arrival that the dark magician was in control.”

Nick felt kind of dizzy. “But – then Dream—”

“Yes,” Karl said, eyes darkened with gloom. “The very first thing he did, almost, was take Dream prisoner, delighted now that he had the power and forces behind him to do so. Still, even with the rest of my – us still loyal to the Queen of Faerie fled or killed, Dream would not be easy to defeat, and the Dark Magician laid a trap. He captured an old baby blanket of Dream’s and wove an entangling spell. Dream had no defense.”

“But he’s alive,” Wilbur butted in, and Karl looked up, nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said. “Well. Yes. As far as we know.”

“You’d know,” George said, fiercely. “ _We’d_ know if he was dead. We would. So that means—”

“Yup,” Nick said. He felt suddenly very sure, strange confidence growing in his chest. He looked at Karl. “Which way to the castle?”

It took remarkable effort that night to talk themselves out of setting off immediately; Nick felt a horrible urgency, a need to get there and get Dream out, as soon as possible, and Wilbur was hovering dangerously near to the door, as if ready to charge off at any moment.

Karl told them, though, how heavily guarded the castle was, both physically and magically, and how Dream could be _anywhere_ in it, under intense protection, and that they had to _think_. “I get that you’re worried,” he assured, sypmathetically. “I am too, okay, but you’ve just got to wait.”

George looked down, hair falling in his eyes, mouth twisting downwards, and Nick took in a breath and tried not to yell, tried not to shout about how much trouble Dream was in, how much pain he could be in.

In the end, Wilbur said, quietly, “It’s hard. We’ve been looking for – for ages, now. We need to find him.”

“I understand,” Karl insisted. “But you have to trust me, and wait.” He sighed, rubbed his hands against his face, shoulders slumped in something that looked a little like defeat. After a moment, he continued. “For now, I can give you beds to sleep in, and baths if you would like them. Believe me, it’ll be better for Dream’s sake if you just wait until you can help him properly, with less of a chance of failure, rather than charging in right now, thinking time is of the essence.”

“It is,” Nick said.

“Yes,” Karl agreed. “But it’s not the only thing.”

For a long while, they were all silent. Then finally George looked up and sighed. “I’d like that bath if you don’t mind,” he said, and Karl nodded.

“Of course,” he said. “And I’ll get some food out, too.”

While George took his turn in the bath, Karl told them more about the situation, about the cold winter that had descended upon the city, indeed, the country, the slow, constant state of fear.

“It must be horrible,” Nick sympathized.

“It is not so much this that I am worried about,” he told him. “It’s what happens _after_ this. When everyone forgets that he is not the rightful king.”

It did not take Nick long before he realized exactly how lucky they had been to be found by Karl when they had. He was not only one of the last loyal Faeries left in The Green, according to his information, but he also commanded magic that looked as easy and effortless as Dream’s own. (“Though I’m not as good as him,” he said, and then smiled, quick and sharp. “Mind you, nobody is.”)

It was thanks to this magic that he took to taking one of them out with Karl each day to get food and, on occasion, information, always under heavy disguise. (“You may be sure that the barkeeper has spread the word about you,” he said. “Now you look the same as ever, but nobody will connect you with that particular piece of information.”) Nick was grateful for the way if nothing else, this lets him explore The Green.

The Green continued to be something entirely different, nothing like Nick had ever thought could be possible. The landscape itself was constantly shifting; Nick would walk up an alleyway leading to Karl's house from the main road, only to find himself approaching the city square, which should have been five miles in the opposite direction. There were sudden, ominous storms with lightning and rain pouring down unexpectedly, the sky almost green against black clouds, and Karl would tell him in a hushed voice that the city didn’t so much appreciate being conquered.

After all the continual magic being used in it every day, he told him, the Green had become something more alive; something that could not be properly measured or understood, something that was reactive and almost conscious. Nick thought of old legends and stories, from another world and before these wars in Faerie, about monsters of the ocean, krakens stirring from the deep.

“Do you like it?” Karl asked him once.

Nick hesitated, unsure if he would come off ridiculously naïve, and then shrugged it away. “I don’t feel like it’s something to be liked,” he said, biting his lip and considering. “It feels more like something you’ve got to get along with. That you don’t have a choice about the matter.”

Karl looked at him appraisingly. “Maybe there’s a bit of Faerie in you, after all, Nick,” he said, and Nick winked at him.

“No such thing,” he told him, and that startled a genuine, amused laugh out of him. Nick quite liked Karl’s laugh, though high pitched and giddy, it was charming in a way and strangely contagious.

He and Karl were out one day going for food again, and the marketplace was abuzz with something, more than just the daily worry and bargaining. They were running out of food, Karl had told them; it was somewhat normal after any major war, major rebellion – inevitably people died, innocents, people who just made food, bread, looked after livestock. People died and places were looted and for a couple of years, everyone would always be short, and hungry.

Today, though, the crowd was whispering and shuffling about something else, and there was even tentative hope and excitement in some of their eyes. Nick began, “Maybe we should ask what’s going on,” knowing even as he said it that Karl would shake his head, refusing to break his cardinal rule of never speaking to anyone except shopkeepers who would forget him the moment he left.

“No,” he said. “If it’s this important, I’m sure we’ll know soon enough.”

It did not take long, either – as they walked away, The Green changed in directions again, leading them down an alleyway Nick didn’t recognize, didn’t think they’d been down before. When they were there, though, something stole his attention, and he knew without a doubt that this was what they had been talking about.

It was a huge poster, spread up along a wall. Karl looked at it, eyebrows furrowed, hugging the loaf of bread to his chest. “A party,” he scoffed. “Call it a gloating session, simple fear-mongering. Inviting everyone along so they can see how powerful he is.”

Nick stared at it, the gaudy, bright text spelling out the declaration in huge letters. “It’s still a party,” he said, slowly. “It’s a way to get into the castle.”

Karl regarded him carefully. “With what invitation?” he asked. “Under what name?”

Nick started to smile, grabbing his hand and dragging him along until he hurried Karl's pace and they came up to the stairs leading up to his home. “Every party needs some music,” he said, and Karl shot him a goofy smile back.

Wilbur and George looked up and George was on his feet in an instant, a ready smile echoing theirs. “What’s going on?’” he asked.

“I think I’ve found a way in,” Nick said and told them.

“You still haven’t worked it out entirely, though,” Karl said, after a while. “I mean – how are you going to find him?”

“You said it’s fear-mongering,” Nick reminded him. “So isn’t there a good chance that he’ll be there? Imprisoned – and made an example of, or something?”

“Yes,” Karl said, slowly. “But then you’re going to have to snatch him out from under their very fingers.”

“No,” Nick disagreed. “No, we just need to get him free. And then—”

He snuck a glance at George, who grinned and then did exaggerated jazz hands. “ _Magic_ ,” George said and hummed a quick, jaunty tune. Karl giggled.

“With music?” he asked. “You’ll have to be – no offense, it’s a good idea, but just – we study music, here. There’s an art to it, and the _King_ ,” (always that same snarl, the righteous outrage), “is no small talent. Has Dream taught you such power? I didn’t think it was possible.”

Nick’s heart dropped, because it was true because Dream hadn’t taught them anything beyond tiny childish things. How on earth were they expected to stand up to incredibly dangerous magicians with the weird, lilting rhythms Dream used to sing with them, Nick wondered, with rounds that sounded beautiful but were, he guessed, essentially worthless.

George just shook his head, though, eyes determined. “We’ll give them something different,” he said. “Something they don’t know how to deal with. But Dream will.”

“What?” Wilbur asked, and George told them. After a moment, they began to smile.

“Well,” Karl said. “I’ll hunt up some instruments.”

Nick hadn’t been sure how he planned to do it, and he still didn’t know how he’d pulled it off, but hunt up instruments Karl did, returning triumphantly with two acoustic guitars and a tambourine, which they distributed accordingly. Nick said, “Maybe we should practice,” but George shook his head, looking regretful.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” he said. “If I’m right, if it’s the kind of magic, then – they’ll hear it. And we’ll get found out before we start. D’you know the chords, Wilbur?”

“Pretty sure,” Wilbur said. “C, D7 and G on that last line of the chorus, right?”,

“Right,” George confirmed, and grinned at them all, baring his teeth.

It was hard, not practicing; Nick sang it in his head and then tapped along, but George was insistent that they not even hum it, and he kept trying to hum by accident, so in the end he gave up and forbade himself from even touching the tambourine. In the meantime, Karl briefed them on what they should do, what they would be able to do – “It’ll be in a big hall,” he said, “And you’ll only really have the chance to do one song.” He took them to be registered, too, which Nick appreciated, especially because he was shaking when they came back, and it was only really then that Nick began to understand just how much he hated the usurpers of the throne, not just for Dream’s sake or Karl's (he had been, he told them, a high member of the Faerie Court) but for the sake of all of Faerie, and its people.

It was nerve-wracking, in the week leading up to the party. Nick had nightmares that they managed to break Dream out of some kind of dungeon only to be caught on the way out, or that George and Wilbur couldn’t sing, or that Wilbur _could_ sing but halfway through he turned into a dragon who turned on them and had been the evil magician all along, and then he had a mild panic attack and had to wake Karl up to check that the unlawful King couldn’t see into their dreams and find treason lurking there (he couldn’t Karl told him, in an amused way that felt oddly affectionate).

The day of the party was grey and cold, and Nick woke up too early, and then couldn’t get back to sleep; he came out at what he thought was something like five a.m. to find Wilbur and George sitting by the embers of the fire, talking in low voices. When he came in, they looked up and made room for him, with twin sheepish grins. Nick didn’t talk, too tired, too sick with nerves, but he leaned on Wilbur’s shoulder and George gripped his hand, nails biting into Nick’s skin and leaving pink, crescent-shaped marks, something for Nick to run his fingers over absently for the rest of the morning.

Karl made them leave early because there would be many musicians playing, he told them, wanting to gain favor from this new King, and they didn’t want to have to sit outside the Great Hall for ages waiting their turn. They weren’t the first in line, but they weren’t anywhere near the back of the line, either, and when they were given the order of performances, Nick swallowed, nerves making his stomach twist queasily: they were to be the fifth act.

“I can’t stay with you,” Karl told them. “They know I’m not a musician, but I’m going to slip inside the hall, okay? Good luck.” He hugged each of them quickly, and bumped a small peck against Nick's cheekbones, and took a breath, looking at them with eyes that were frightened and desperate and still so, so proud.

“We’ll–We'll b–beat them,” Nick stuttered, taken aback from the kiss, and Karl touched his cheek.

“You already have,” he assured confidently, and then rocked back on his heels, looked at them with something akin to marvel. “Three humans,” he murmured, “Who would have thought it?”

Karl gave them a kind smile, hope twinkling in his soft blue eyes, he turned around and vanished into thin air, and the three were on their own until the Faerie standing at the door nodded at them and said, “You’re next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, that moment when Dream literally not found DNF DNF DNF. Ahem.. whew, this was a fun one to write, Karl was such a cute addition, I'm glad I added him in. I hope y'all also liked the blatant Fundy cameo hehe. If you enjoyed reading this chap consider leaving a kudos and/or a bookmark, it'd mean the world to me! Feel free to leave any suggestions, questions (that can be answered within reason haha), commentary, and critques in the comments, I'd love to hear all of it (reminder this is my first fic so don't be shy)!


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